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KOTA KINABALU: A blog post that hints that the federal government is about to grant a special pass to illegal immigrants in Sabah is misleading, says Senior Deputy Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan.
He called the blog post that had been circulating on social media malicious.
The article titled “Abah Wants to Consider Giving Temporary Passes to Illegal Immigrants” also included a photo of Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Jeffrey holding some kind of framed certificate.
The president of Sabah STAR said that the image had nothing to do with what was written.
“The Prime Minister was only referring to the situation on the Peninsula, and the temporary pass is nothing like the temporary Sabah or PSS card, which Warisan championed earlier this year,” Jeffrey said.
“The proposal was to give a temporary pass to stranded illegals already in Malaysia to work on oil palm and rubber plantations, allowing them to work for one to two years before being replaced by legal workers,” Kitingan said.
It is reported that the government was considering granting temporary work permits to illegal immigrants in the country to overcome the shortage of foreign workers in the palm oil and rubber industries following the border closure.
Muhyiddin said the government was looking for ways to solve the shortage of foreign workers in these two sectors, especially after Malaysia closed its borders to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Kitingan said Sabah had its own policies on labor and immigration, with which the federal government could not constitutionally interfere.
He said that in Sabah, the situation was different because the unemployment rate was high and therefore giving illegal immigrants special work passes would be similar to depriving authentic Sabahans of job opportunities.
“The new Sabah government cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past.
“Sabahans have expressed loud and clear that they would not tolerate such nonsense,” he said.
Kitingan advised the opposition to seek better use of their time and to heed the King’s advice to stop doing politics.
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