By Olivia Miwil - March 11, 2021 @ 2:46pm
KOTA KINABALU: Former deputy chief minister Datuk Christina Liew today hopes the federal government will "walk the talk" when it comes to dealing with illegal immigrant issue in Sabah.
The Api-Api assemblyman said the people wanted to see tangible results and look forward to firm actions on the part of the federal government to resolve this long-standing issue plaguing the state.
"We hope the announcement is not just another 'promise' in view of the forthcoming 15th General Election.
"The federal government must prove its sincerity in wanting to help Sabah deport the thousands of illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. This can be achieved by making good on the announcement," she said in a statement.
Liew welcomed Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin's recent announcement in dealing with illegal immigrants in Sabah without any compromise.
Hamzah said on Tuesday that the Home Ministry and the Sabah state government had decided to take firm action and would no longer compromise in dealing with illegal immigrants in the state.
The home minister also said the move would include deporting them from Sabah as what had been done to over 600,000 Filipino and Indonesian illegal immigrants since 1990 until this month.
Liew also expressed her concern over the Statistics Department's estimation that the State's population in 2020 would be 3.91 million, including more than one million non-citizens.
Based on media reports, she said apart from being crime perpetrators, illegal immigrants were known to be carriers of diseases like AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis and malaria.
"Yes, Sabahans also have these diseases but the rates of disease prevalence are higher in the transient population than those among the local population.
"As such, it is a great challenge, if not impossible, to control these diseases from spreading from illegal immigrants to the local population because they are difficult to trace.
"More importantly, we won't be able to control the spread of Covid-19 unless the relevant authorities stop these undocumented people from coming into the state," she said.
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