Pekida backs special passes proposal
KOTA KINABALU: Malaysian Islamic Propagation and Welfare Organisation (Pekida) Sabah fully supports the State Government’s proposal to issue special passes for foreign workers in the state.
However, priority must first be given to the ‘stateless people’ as the status of their citizenship has been a perennial issue that has been besieging the state for more than four decades.
Pekida president Datu Akjan Datu Ali Muhammad described the proposal as a ‘win-win situation’ as it could allow the stateless people to be legally employed, while at the same time solving the labour shortage issue.
“While we welcome and fully support the State Government’s ongoing plan and effort to address the severe shortage of palm oil workers in plantations, we are of the opinion that priority should be given to stateless people when it comes to job recruitment,” Datu Akjan told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday.
He estimated that there were currently more than 100,000 ‘stateless people’ in Sabah and some of them are in their mid 40s.
“We urge the state government to not issue work passes to illegal immigrants who had contravened the law of this country; in fact they should be punished according to the law. But, as for the stateless people, we need to consider their plight from the legal and humanitarian perspective.
“They are actually not stateless except that their status could not be ascertained, largely due to political reasons,” he added.
He stressed that stateless people are those who were born in the state whose parents are either foreign immigrants, or one of them is a Malaysian citizen.
There were also many instances of native Sabahans, especially those living in the interior, being rendered stateless due to late registration of birth.
In contrast, illegal immigrants are people who came into the state without any proper or valid documents or they had overstayed despite the expiry of their work permits.
Datu Akjan said that it was sad to see the stateless people not being able to make a decent living, adding that these people would be required to pay higher medical fees and they were even preyed upon by rogue enforcement for the latter’s personal income.
In this regard, Datu Akjan called on the Home Ministry to establish a special task force to fully resolve the said issue.
“We are ever-ready to assist both the federal and state governments to resolve this problem, such as to identify and locate them. We are also prepared to provide them with necessary skills training to make them employable, besides helping them to secure suitable jobs,” he added.
He added that Pekida Sabah would be submitting a memorandum soon to urge the State Government to act on the issue.
Last week, Chief Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal announced that the State Government would consider issuing the special documents as such a move was necessary in ensuring that the growth of the state’s plantation industry would not be hindered by the labour shortage issue.