KOTA KINABALU: The Federal government and Home Ministry’s proposed single-agency comprehensive Holistic Plan on Enforcement Against Illegal Immigrants will not be successful in Sabah and Sarawak without reviving and re-activating the Sabah/Sarawak Rangers and their former Border Scouts.
Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan, STAR Sabah Chief cum Tambunan State Assemblyman said this in a statement released today.
In response to the Home Minister’s announcement that the Holistic Plan will achieve “zero illegal immigrants”, Dr. Jeffrey said that “in the past, the federal security enforcement, immigration and national registration multi-agencies were not able to stem the influx of illegal immigrants, which now runs into more than a million, into Sabah.”
“Combining them into a single agency will not improve and will not stem the influx of illegals into Sabah as the problems will still exist in the proposed single-agency. These problems need to be identified and fixed” added Dr. Jeffrey.
Firstly, the federal government and its component political parties need to remove their hidden agenda and political motives of mis-using the illegal immigrants as voters to assist their objective of retaining political power, he said.
According to him, lessons from the past need to be learnt and avoided, not repeated. Unfortunately, in the New Malaysia, it appears to be worse off with both the PH-Federal and Warisan-led Sabah governments openly implementing the PSS as a channel for Project IC2.0 in Sabah.
Eventually, these PSS holders will be turned into MyKad holders and voters resulting in reverse ethnic-engineering and demographically changing the genuine Sabahans into a minority he opined.
“Secondly, just like its multi-agencies predecessor, the single-agency will fail to carry out their duties to protect and safeguard Sabah as they do not have the integrity, credibility and cannot be trusted to carry out their duties on their own,” he said.
There need to be a check and balance monitoring mechanism and monitored by stakeholders, not by the agencies themselves, he stated adding that one cannot expect and cannot trust a thief to catch the thieves among themselves.
Thirdly, unless the weaknesses and problems like corruption, inefficiency, lack of patriotism, closing of eyes and fattening pockets, cover-ups, political interference and political reporting for “feel good factor”, are identified and eradicated, it will be “business as usual” in the single-agency.
T”like documents carrying the BN logo, boats with the Warisan flag to get through the security checks must stop. Culprits who sell out the security and sovereignty of Sabah and Malaysia such as being involved in allowing illegals free access into the country, fake ICs and syndicates including JPN and Immigration insiders need to be charged with treason, and after found guilty need to be hanged as a deterrence to would-be culprits and traitors.”
He stressed that even with videos going viral online, photographs of wrong-doings and postings by security personnel of party flags of impropriety, the Federal government have failed to take action to prosecute the offenders and very little done to solve Sabah’s decades old problems.
In the new system, every single wrong must be properly investigated, not covered-up to protects party supporters and people with political connections. The wrong-doers and offenders should be brought to book and eventually hanged, Jeffery said.
” The illegals should be arrested, charged and deported in accordance with the laws of Malaysia, not given documents like the PSS.”
” Last but not least, even with all the holistic plan and steps taken, the Holistic Plan will not work without reviving and re-activating the Sabah and Sarawak Rangers and the Sabah and Sarawak Border Scouts. Historically, they have performed admirably in stopping incursions and entries of illegal immigrants before they were disbanded in 1974.”
The Police Field Force, Army, Navy and other security units with a sprinkling of Sabahans and Sarawakians cannot perform as well as the Sabah and Sarawak Border Scouts, he added.
“This is because they cannot differentiate between a non-Sabahan or non-Sarawakian illegal as only the local Sabahans and Sarawakians will be able to differentiate the difference. And the locals will be better suited to the local terrain and environment compared to the Malayan counterparts to safeguard and protect Sabah, Sarawak and Sabahans and Sarawakians.”
Part of this is borne out by the ineffectiveness of ESSCOM in their mere deployment in Sabah’s East Coast where cross-border kidnappings have continued and weekly intrusions by illegals in Semporna and Tawau, he said.
An intensive campaign should also be conducted throughout Sabah and involve even the village chiefs so that Sabah rights and patriotism are instilled, according to him.
“The people can then be the eyes and ears against intruders and provide the much-needed intelligence for our security forces.”
There has been widespread support in Sabah and Sarawak for the revival of the Border Scouts and Rangers. It is not too late to include them in the Holistic Plan if the Federal government is serious and sincere in wanting to have a “zero illegal immigrants” objective.-pr/BNN
