SABAH will not be pursuing the Sabah IC plan to counter the issues of the state’s migrants and stateless residents, Sabah’s Assistant Law and Native Affairs Minister Jannie Lasimbang said.

She said the Sabah IC plan was not part of the Sabah Pakatan Harapan (PH) electoral manifesto, but that it was one of the recommendations by the Royal Commission of Inquiry on illegal immigrants, which PH said it would look into and implement.

“Although Sabah PH had talked about implementing the RCI’s recommendations, its aim was mainly to clean up the Sabah electoral roll and give citizenship to those who were eligible.

“I don’t think the state government has talked about it, but it is clearly not PH’s direction.

“One thing is clear – we are not pursuing it (Sabah IC). Instead, we are looking into other solutions to Sabah’s stateless problem,” she said in Kota Kinabalu today.

The workshop was organised by Human Resources Development for Rural Areas (DHRRA), an civil society group that looks into cases of stateless people in Peninsular Malaysia.

Various Sabahan political quarters have called for the use of Sabah ICs, including Warisan deputy president Darell Leiking, who demanded that the initiative be implemented as one of several moves to curb terror threats in Sabah.

The idea was also proposed by Gabungan Sabah, in its election manifesto, while Upko, when it was still in Barisan Nasional, had proposed for the reissuance of MyKad to Sabahans.

Unofficial statistics show around 800,000 illegal migrants in Sabah, out of the state’s 3.9 million people.

Cases have surfaced of migrants being used by certain political quarters to win elections in return for citizenship.

Sabahan migrants had also became victims of fraud by unscrupulous agents promising them MyKad. – June 2, 2018.