Warisan Youth chief calls for Philippines consulate in Sabah

LAHAD DATU: Parti Warisan Sabah Youth chief Datuk Mohd Azis Jamman yesterday urged the Philippines to open a consulate in Sabah to help with the repatriation of the Filipino holders of the IMM13 pass and those without travel documents.

He said that the Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur had, in principle, indicated that it will accept into the Philippines the Filipino IMM13 pass holders and other Filipino nationals without travel documents.

“Now, the embassy is even reluctant to place an officer in Sabah to look into the matter. It is asking us to bring these people to Kuala Lumpur and buy air tickets for them. How is it possible? There are so many of them. It only makes things difficult for us,” he told reporters here.

He also said that he would leave it to the Foreign Ministry to convey the message that Sabah is an independent entity within Malaysia and that the Philippines should drop its claim to Sabah.

Mohd Azis, who is the Deputy Home Minister, said no one is above the law and that even the Pala’u or Sea Gypsies of the Philippines will be arrested if they breach Malaysian laws.

He also said that the government will not arbitrarily give citizenship to anyone.

The state government had proposed a legalisation process to identify the number of illegal immigrants in Sabah but the opposition politicians sensationalised the matter saying that the government wanted to give citizenship status to illegal immigrants, he said.

"We only wanted to tag these immigrants. When these people without proper documents commit crimes, the cases remain unsolved because of the lack of records,” he said. - Bernama