KOTA KINABALU: Pakatan Harapan agrees with the move to obtain data on refugees and stateless people, but withheld their backing for the issuance of a special foreigner card for migrants.
Sabah Pakatan chief Datuk Christina Liew said Pakatan threw in its support for the government to initiate an exercise to collect biometric data on these groups of foreigners in the state after listening to the proposal in a town hall session to discuss ways to tackle the migrant issue in Sabah on Thursday (June 2).
Liew, however, said Pakatan has yet to agree whether to support the second part of the town hall, organised by Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan, which touched on the issuance of the foreigner card.
“The government can go ahead with the registration (of refugees and stateless people in Sabah), but we are not sure of the second part yet,” she said in a press conference here on Friday (June 3).
“We didn’t vote for the second part because we want to see the details of it (the card) and we need to study it.”
Kitingan, who heads a special committee on undocumented foreign workers and foreign nationals in Sabah, said the state is set to go ahead with the issuance of the special foreigner card for migrants, including refugees and stateless people broadly dubbed “inland foreigners”.
He said the proposed foreigner identity card would be renewable annually and would focus on inland foreigners.
These "inland foreigners" were Filipino refugees issued with Immigration Pass (IMM13), Special Task Force census certificate and the Kad Burung Burung (issued in the 1980s by the state government).
Some 140 representatives from political parties from the government and the Opposition including Pakatan leaders, non-governmental organisations and native chiefs were among those who attended the town hall session.
An online poll saw 89% voting in support of the issuance of a foreigner card, while 99% supported the collection of biometric digital data on the inland foreigners in Sabah.
Meanwhile, Upko secretary-general Nelson Angang noted the special foreigner card was exactly the same as the previously scrapped Sabah Temporary Pass (PSS) which was proposed during the Parti Warisan-Pakatan reign.
“To be honest, what we heard (in the town hall) is nothing different than what was proposed by the Federal Government during the Warisan-Pakatan administration.
“It’s the same proposal but with a different name. It is actually the PSS,” he said.
He added it was the same stakeholders invited by the previous state government to discuss the PSS at the town hall session on Thursday which included various local and federal government agencies.
“With respect to the (present) state leaders, they opposed the PSS but yesterday, they were sitting in front as VIPs,” Angang said.
He said the Opposition has also been told not to politicise the foreigner card now.
“Actually, Pakatan and Warisan at that time did not politicise the matter. We brought people to a dialogue to understand this (PSS) better but now those who came yesterday were the same people that we had invited,” he said.
The Warisan-Pakatan government ended up having to scrap the PSS, which was proposed by the then Perikatan Nasional-led Federal Government.
The issue of documentation of inland foreigners was used by their rivals, including Kitingan, as political ammunition against Warisan which unsuccessfully contested the Kimanis by-election in January 2020.
Warisan’s defeat in Kimanis was widely attributed to the PSS issue.
