KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) has urged the State Government to firmly reject the importation of Bangladeshi workers into Sabah from among the 1.5 million workers to be brought into Malaysia starting later this year.
“To have tens, if not hundred thousands of foreign workers from another country, on top of those from Indonesia and the Philippines, will compound the social problems in Sabah,” SAPP president Datuk Seri Panglima Yong Teck Lee, said yesterday.
He was commenting on the statement made by Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi that 1.5 million workers from Bangladesh would be brought into Malaysia in stages over three years to work in various fields, especially in the plantation sectors, in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.
Yong lamented that it has been one full month since the Home minister revealed the plan but the Sabah government has been strangely silent on the issue.
According to him, it is inevitable that any huge population of foreigners will bring with them different sets of problems.
Currently, in Peninsular Malaysia, foreigners from Myanmar, Nepal, Indonesia and other countries are wreaking havoc on society with serious crimes, hygiene and squatters problems.
“Sabah, with our own set of social problems arising from the huge population of foreign workers and illegals, can ill afford another influx of foreign workers from Bangladesh.
“We are already battered by the proliferation of illegals, dubious citizenship documents, marriages of convenience between foreign workers and local women.
“The earlier the Sabah government puts a firm stop to such federal interference in the Sabah’s labour market, the better it is for Sabah,” Yong said.