KOTA KINABALU: UPKO Youth movement wants the Federal and State governments to consider the party’s recommendation to recall and reissue all MyKads issued in Sabah.
“We are confident that the government agencies are capable of designing the mechanism to conduct such an exercise which will weed out those who had obtained the Malaysian identification document through dubious means,” UPKO Youth Training, Policies and Government Policies Bureau chief Petrus C. Mojuntin said.
The movement, which had a meeting last week, pointed out that all Malaysians were required by law to change their old ‘Blue’ identity card to the new MyKad.
“Children are also required to have their own Mykad when they reach the ages of 12 and 18. Now Malaysian children are also issued the MyKid which will be changed when they attain the ages of 12 and 18.
“Therefore, we see no problem for the authorities to do the same for the sake of identifying the real Sabahans, and weed out the illegal immigrants who obtained MyKads through illegal means,” Petrus said.
According to him, UPKO Youth stressed that it is not against anybody or individual per se seeking Malaysian citizenship through the proper channels. However, citizenship should only be granted to people who qualify based on the requirements of the Sabah Constitution.
UPKO Youth, Petrus said, also recommended that the National Registration Department (NRD) display the names of those granted Malaysian citizenship on its website for the public to scrutinize and also report if they have any doubts on the matter.
This is one way of galvanizing community support as a constructive way to combat against those identity cards issued fraudulently, as highlighted by the RCI Report, Petrus stressed, adding that UPKO Youth is of the opinion that urgent action must be taken against those who have obtained their citizenship through dubious means.
“We have also lodged a report with the Penampang police urging that the relevant authorities launch an investigation into the Project IC which was stated in the RCI report. We sure all Sabahans want to know who is the mastermind of the project which had issued 67,675 Blue identity cards to illegal immigrants and also the identity of the recipients.
“We also want to know who is behind the issuance of Malaysian citizenship to 68,703 illegal immigrants without them going through the necessary process as well as their identity. An investigation as to the actual number of Malaysian IC and citizenship issued through dubious means must also be conducted as the RCI report could not determine the actual number,” Petrus said.
The movement urged the police to investigate those involved in the activities of syndicates who were alleged to have sold Malaysian identity cards through their network of NRD staff and community leaders like village chief and Wakil Anak Negeri who had endorsed documents necessary for the illegal immigrants to obtain the identification documents.
“We are confident that the police will be able to do this task well and make our country proud. We believe that our police force in Sabah are aware of the influx of the illegal immigrants roaming around the city and towns.
“The negative impact towards our country, the social implications, the health expenditure on diseases carried, as well as the loss of tax revenue, not mentioning too that the local Bumiputeras are forced to compete with them for jobs especially when they are desperate to work for lower wages.
“We do not deny that the legal immigrants who came legally also contributed to the development of our country. But we must not forget that there are a lot of illegal immigrants who came here since the 70’s and managed to obtain fraudulent citizenship stating that they are locals born here, but in actual fact they were born in their home country,” he lamented,
The number of immigrants in Sabah who obtained Mykads could be in the hundreds of thousands and this could be felt by the rakyat.
This was also confirmed by the National Census, and also mentioned in the RCI Report on page 248, quoting the Statistics Department which stated that from the period 1970 to 2000, the population for the Kadazandusunmurut (KDM) was 167 per cent; the population increases for the Bajau and Iiranun was 344 per cent and the population increase for the Malays was 1,552 per cent.
“Just looking at these numbers we can see something is seriously wrong. We look forward to the government agencies to do their part and professionally, and for the Sabah State Assembly to table this as an emergency issue to be discussed extensively and counter-measures taken urgently,” Petrus said.