CM: Sabah not planning to grant citizenship to vaccinated illegal immigrants

 By Olivia Miwil - September 23, 2021 @ 1:57pm

Sabah state government will not be issuing identity cards to vaccinated illegal immigrants, Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor said.- Picture courtesy of Sabah Information Department

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah state government will not be issuing identity cards to vaccinated illegal immigrants, Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor said.

"For your information, the Sabah government always uphold the security rights and privileges of the people.

"Therefore, we will not give identity cards nor citizenship to illegal immigrants who received vaccines in Sabah.

"However, the Sabah government will consider natives who have yet to obtain their identity cards," he said when replying to an additional question by Datuk Ewon Benedick (Upko-Kadamaian) at the 16th State Assembly sitting here today.

Ewon had earlier asked for the number of illegal immigrants who had received the Covid-19 vaccines, the vaccination rate and actions taken by the relevant to expedite the process.

Meanwhile, Sabah Community Development and People's Wellbeing Minister Shahelmy Yahya said based on the 2020 census, 1.09 million out of 3.9 million total population are illegal immigrants.

However, he said there was no data of adult immigrants who are eligible to receive the vaccines.

As for the vaccination rate on Sept 21, Shahelmey said 1,614,771 or 59.4 per cent of the total population have completed their inoculation.

He said since Sept 16, the state government has allowed teenagers, aged 12 to 17, to get vaccinated.

The state saw 144,248 people or 33.8 percent of eligible recipients were given the first dose of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

"There are several factors contributing to the delay of vaccination in Sabah, which include late registration via the MySejahtera system among those aged 60 and above under Phase 2 (of the Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme).

"Other factors are the vaccine shortage in the middle of July," he said, adding up to Sept 20, Sabah had received 5,042,310 doses of vaccines and would get another 2.89 million doses this month.

Shahelmey is also the state's immunisation programme operations director.

He said among measures to speed up the process was the setting up of 224 vaccination centres, 773 outreach programmes, and house-to-house "vaccine mopping" operations.