Leaders told: View the matter seriously
Wednesday, 28 December 2005 (Source: Daily Express)

KOTA KINABALU: Former Senator Dr Chong Eng Leong cautioned that treating the illegal immigrant issue lightly will render the Government's Vision 2020 unthinkable.

Chong, a Supreme Council member of Parti Bersatu Sabah, wants national leaders and the relevant authorities to reverse this trend as he sees Sabah's "population explosion", in particular, an impending threat for the current and future generations.

He was reacting to a Suhakam warning last week that "Sabah has recorded an extraordinary increase in its population over the last 35 years and that it could be due to the illegal entry of foreigners into the State."

"Suhakam's disclosure serves as another reminder to national leaders and the authorities," he said. "In the past the authorities seemed to turn a deaf ear to umpteen calls from both outside and inside Parliament to tackle the illegal immigrant issue in Sabah.

"Such disregard has resulted in blatant issuance of ICs (both genuine and fake), backdoor Malaysian citizenship, Bumiputra status, registration in the Sabah Electoral Rolls, apart from draining our precious resources in health care, education, water and electricity supply.

"I started a painstaking study eight years ago on the transient population, tracing their entry, characteristics, presence and development. We in PBS brought the issues to the fore for our national leaders to scrutinise. It has been exactly a year since I submitted the memorandum to Suhakam on 'Infringement of Rights on Malaysian Citizens in Sabah by the Presence of Large Number of Transient Population'.

"In it I detailed population growth, ICs for foreigners, MyKad, IMM13 holders, irregularities in Sabah Electoral Rolls, street kids and so on. All that we anticipated are now coming to pass!

"The glaring and ultimate concern is the risk to our security and sovereignty, not to forget that the claim on Sabah by our neighbour is still alive.

"In 2005 genuine Malaysians in Sabah have already been outnumbered by foreigners and their descendants. Just imagine the population of Sabah in year 2020, extrapolated, it would be near five million, and we genuine Malaysians will only be 1.8 million compared to three million of 'them'! "I sincerely hope our national leaders and authorities are fully aware of these predicaments and please reverse the trend, otherwise Vision 2020 would be unthinkable," he added.

Suhakam's Prof Datuk Mohd Hamdan Adnan had said the latest statistics showed that the population in Sabah has increased more than four folds from about 697,900 in 1970 to almost three million in 2004.

In comparison, neighbouring Sarawak's total population grew from around one million to 2.3 million over the same period.

"This is quite puzzling, and of course, the citizens of Malaysia, especially the people of Sabah, have the right to know the contributing factors of this extra ordinary increase," Hamdan said.