KOTA KINABALU: As many as 15,390 public service officers and staff from Peninsular Malaysia are currently working in 94 federal departments and 42 statutory bodies in the state.
Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Department, Datuk Radin Malleh said the department with the biggest number of these individuals was the Sabah Education Department with 8,152 last year.
Radin said on average, 7,500 to 8,500 civil servants from the peninsula were sent to Sabah each year, for the last five years.
“The total number of officers and staff in Sabah is 85,498, of whom 82 per cent are Sabahans,” he said in reply to a question from Abd Muis Picho (BN-Sebatik) at the state assembly sitting here yesterday.
State Minister for Community Development and Consumer Affairs, Datuk Azizah Mohd Dun in reply to a question
from Datuk Louis Rampas (BN-Kiulu) on street children in Sabah, said that based on statistics from 2007 till May 2012, 1,392 such children were saved and 1,327 released during that period.
Azizah said 65 children were still in the Ehsan Home, Kota Kinabalu under the care of officials from the Sabah/Labuan Special Task Force. Meanwhile, the assembly yesterday approved a bill prohibiting coastal areas in this city to be alienated to others.
The areas encompass 1,550 hectares stretching from Tanjung Aru to Teluk Likas, said Minister in the Chief Minister’s Department Datuk Radin Malleh when tabling the bill to amend the Sabah Land Ordinance 1930.
“Existing policies and guidelines are found to be no longer suitable to prohibit the alienation of land in these areas.
“The amendment is the best approach to ensure that the state land is fully protected from those who may take advantage of the situation through the legal process,” he said.
Radin also said that the intensive development in Sabah now was no reason to sacrifice the natural environment.
Unplanned development would only damage the natural environment, beauty, uniqueness and landscape of Kota Kinabalu, he said. — Bernama