Nothing done on Sabah’s immigrant issues, says Sandakan’s MP Vivian

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin answers a question from Sandakan Member Parliament Vivian Wong during Tuesday’s Dewan Rakyat sitting. Screenshot courtesy of Parlimen Malaysia YouTube Channel.

SANDAKAN, Oct 6 — Democratic Action Party (DAP) Member of Parliament for Sandakan Vivian Wong, has lambasted Home Minister Dato’ Seri Hamzah Zainudin for his “photocopy” answer during the Minister’s winding up of the 12th Malaysia Plan session at the Dewan Rakyat Tuesday concerning the long standing illegal immigrants issues in Sabah.

“During last year Parliament sitting, I called our immigrant issue as the “mother of all our problems” in Sabah, and demanded the government to establish a strategy and concrete plan based on the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) report done previously to deal with this critical issue immediately. The same Minister reply then was the government has set up a Jawatankuasa Pengurusan Warga Asing Sabah and technical committee to resolve this issue that has long been considered as the “Achilles heel” of the state”, said Vivian in a statement issued today.

“Today (at the Parliament Tuesday), the same minister, when pressed on what has the government done on tackling the immigrant issue in Sabah, has simply regurgitated his response from a year ago without any real progress. It is still the same old thing of forming jawatankuasa or special committee, more meetings and more engagements.”

She also chided the minister for saying that the delay could be due to the locals opposing the government’s plan on resolving the issue.

“What is the point of spending tax payer money to build more detention centres to house the illegals? We urgently need a comprehensive system to identify and to manage the whereabouts of this huge migrant population. The financial burden we faced vaccinating this large migrant population in the state currently and our inability to trace and locate them is already a serious warning to the authority”.

–WE