Concern over jump in Sabah population

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ELOPURA assemblyman Au Kam Wah has expressed his worries that the extraordinary increase in the population of Sabah could be played up by the opposition when campaigning for the coming election.

He said Sabah’s population in 2010, according to the National Statistics Department, was 3.1 million.

However, only 1.7 million comprised Malaysian citizens born in Sabah while the rest were foreigners born in Sabah, foreigners issued with passes to stay in the state and Malaysians from other states.

“My question is, are the 641,058 non-Malaysians born in Sabah the children of Sabahans who had not registered their marriages, as well as those whose fathers are Sabahans married to foreigners?”

Au pointed out that there are many Sabahans who do not have any identification documents because of these two reasons.

“I was informed that the relevant authorities and Home Ministry have implemented a program to address this problem but I feel the process must be expedited because the issue could be used by  the opposition in the election,” he said.

Au also expressed his worries that the government’s target of zero squatters by 2015 cannot be achieved because the prices of houses in Sabah are too high.

According to him, based on a survey of the average housing prices in the states in Malaysia by the Property Evaluation and Service Department, Sabah is second after Kuala Lumpur when it comes to the house prices.

“We all know that Kuala Lumpur has the most expensive houses but Sabah is second on the list. We always say Sabah is the poorest state in Malaysia but yet the houses here are the second most expensive in the country.

“The average price for houses in Malaysia is RM190,000 and in Sabah it is about RM315,000 each. Therefore Sabahans have a problem now to own their own houses. This will be a future problem and we will not be able to achieve our target of zero squatters by 2015,” he said.

Au proposed that the government, through LPPB, concentrate on building low cost housing for the people instead of competing with private developers in building medium and high cost houses.

The government can also consider freezing individual application for land and reserve the land for the low cost housing projects, he added.

Au also touched on  public criticism and unhappiness with the civil service who are the government’s front liners.

He quoted an open letter published in a local newspaper to the City Hall Mayor detailing the writer’s perception of the civil service.

“I do not agree with this 100 per cent because there are in fact many hard working civil servants, but if we see this type of critics in the newspapers or the Internet, we can just imagine what the level of trust the public has on the government,” he stressed.

“I raise the issue because it cannot be taken lightly as we will be facing the election soon. Giving allocation and bringing development is not enough. We cannot assume that if the rakyats are satisfied with development they will support the government…this is not true like what happened in Selangor, KL, Kuching Sibu, Miri, these are all developed areas but why they do not support the government?” Au questioned.

To garner the people’s trust and support, the government must also be prompt in its follow up action to  public complaints because any delay could cause them to hate the government and this would be a problem, he said adding that elected representatives ended up as the targets because of the government’s weakness.

“Five per cent of civil servants acting like this can be detrimental to the Barisan Nasional (BN). Therefore civil servants have to be focused as they all play a very important role,” he said, adding that if needed, he could compile a list of the departments and personnel who had not carried out their duties properly to be submitted to the relevant authorities.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan urged Au to send a confidential report to the State Secretary so that specific action could be taken on these errant civil servants.