Sabah-born among those denied permanent residency – Phoong
INDIVIDUALS who meet the criteria in their application for permanent residency (PR) in Sabah should be given due consideration and granted approval, said Luyang assemblyman Phoong Jin Zhe.
He noted that over 6,000 applicants were awaiting approval for PR in Sabah.
He said there were many cases whereby the applicants have lived in Sabah for 30 or 40 years and yet were still required to renew their permits and get rejected for PR despite having fulfilled all the criteria required.
“There are original Sabahans who were born here, studied here, worked here and have never been to Peninsular Malaysia.
“However, they are forced to seek companies who were willing to apply for work permits for them, some have to fly to Kuala Lumpur and return to Sabah every three months just because their parents are permanent residents of Sabah.
“Some of my friends were forced to migrate to Australia and other countries because their place of birth does not recognize them,” he said, when debating the State Budget 2019 at the State Legislative Assembly sitting here yesterday.
Hence, Phoong hoped that the State Government would look into the issue and assist genuine Sabahans.
He also urged the State Government to create more high-skilled occupations to lure educated and talented young people back to Sabah.
He opined that one of the reasons contributing to the increase of 0.2 percent of unemployment rate to 5.6 percent last year in Sabah compared to the year before was due to the lack of middle-skilled and high-skilled jobs.
In the Penang Institute report, Sabah offers 60 percent lowskilled jobs while high-skilled occupations comprise less than 10 percent, as compared to 42 percent high-skilled jobs in Selangor.
As such, Phoong said many highly-skilled and educated young people were forced to leave Sabah or to work at the low-skilled jobs.
On another note, he also urged the Federal and State Governments to recognize the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC), which has been accepted by many renowned academic institutions, including Cambridge and Oxford.