Comments on: KDM the new underclass in Umno’s Sabah Baru http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/04/16/kdm-the-new-underclass-in-umnos-sabah-baru/ for Malaysia Fri, 29 Aug 2008 02:23:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: myint3 http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/04/16/kdm-the-new-underclass-in-umnos-sabah-baru/#comment-100444 myint3 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:50:15 +0000 http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/04/16/kdm-the-new-underclass-in-umnos-sabah-baru/#comment-100444 I am unabashedly simplistic in my analysis and conclusion of the root causes of the social ills that continue to plague our society(Sabah). Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe people look into it too much and made too much study upon study that the real cause is under their noses but their minds are too clouded to see the real problem. Like I said, for me it’s simple, I blame it squarely on the proliferation of illegal immigrants in our state, I blame it on our apathetic leaders both at state and federal level, I blame it on the inability of our enforcement and government agencies to maximise their existing wherewithal to stem the social ills that we have (come on, stop whining about not having enough resources, do something about it), I blame it on corruption on all levels, I blame it on the attitude of self-preservations amongst our politicians and leaders and last but not least, I blame it on us. Yes, us! We are apathetic too, we are indifferent to the problem until it happens to us. You read the news, we saw the increased in drug abuse, we read about crimes committed by illegal immigrants and we read about crimes committed both by illegal immigrants and locals that are syabu induced. Yet we do nothing about it! We are arm chair critics; we sit on the fence and wait for someone else to fix our problem for us. We whine and whine and whine. We are comfortable in our status quo. As long as it does not bother me, I won't lift a finger. Look at our brothers and sister in the west, they decided to do something about their problem as evident in the last General Election result. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that a change in government is the solution to our problem. For all I know, BN leaders might be the people who have the resources to counter these problems. What I am saying is, get off our butts and do something about it. Take drastic actions. Be willing to be out of our comfort zone. Rock the status quo. Push our leaders to take action. Organise a petition. Whatever. No demonstration please. I for one, is a firm believer of exercising democracy with responsibility. Believe me, democracy is hard to maintain without economic and political stability. But why do I blame the illegal immigrants for our social ills. If it’s not obvious enough, let me put forth my argument on this matter. Most of these illegal immigrants are uneducated and could not make a living in their own homeland. So they come to Sabah, illegally! Some of them could not find a job and what do they do? They turn to crime. Robbery, Syabu trafficking etc. Ok, we Sabahans have bad apples in our midst too but the presence of these illegal immigrants only exacerbate the situation. They bring in their imported social ills and corrupt our youngsters. They are also sapping the economy. It is reported recently that the poverty rate in Sabah is at 23%. That’s many times the number in West Malaysia. Many job and business opportunities that would have gone to the locals have gone to the hands of these illegal immigrants. I don’t need a Phd to deduce that they don’t pay income tax to the government. There are reports that these illegal immigrants somehow managed to get their hands on fake or forged citizenship documents; stealing our rights including the right to vote. It is alleged that some government officials are involved in this. For the money or for power, what these traitors did is treason in the highest level. They should be put to death for selling away their country. Illegal immigrants have been swarming and bleeding the state and the people of Sabah for more or less three decades now. This problem existed since the 1970s and yet, our detention centre in Papar and Sandakan can only accommodate 2,000/- and 1,500/- inmates respectively and our Tawau and Menggatal detention centre can only accommodate 1,500/- and 2,000/- inmates respectively at any given time. That's totalling 7,000/-. Assuming that the total illegal immigrants in Sabah is in the region of 700,000/-, that would mean that we are only able to detain 1% of the total population of illegal immigrants in Sabah. An article in Wikipedia quoted that Dr Jeffrey Kitingan claimed that the number of illegal immigrants in Sabah numbered to 1.7 million. As our leaders argue and perhaps politicize this issue, more illegal immigrants are sneaking into Sabah. Evidently, Sabah is still a favourite destination for illegal immigrants. On 4 March 2008, Sandakan Marine Police intercepted three boats and detained 107 Filipino near a seaside squatter colony. IS IT TOO LATE? Now the question that keeps bugging me is that, are we already at a stage that we are unable to do anything about this. 1.7 million illegal immigrants and we can only hold 7,000/- of them at any given time? At the same time, more are coming in. To further compound the problem, apparently Manila is dragging its feet in taking back their own citizens. It is reported that we do not have any such problem with the Indonesian government. Perhaps the authorities in the Philippines are not as efficient as its counterpart in Indonesia. They aren't eager to take back their citizens whom are languishing in detention centres in Sabah, are they? If I am a bit coo coo up there or a proponent of the conspiracy theory, I might even go as far as to suggest that perhaps the lack of urgency on the Philippines part is deliberate. It could be systematic invasion. Send in your "settlers" into Sabah, let them sink root in Sabah and propagate. It's an open secret that they have design on the state of Sabah. No one wants to talk about it but they are talking about it. Look at the discussion at this forum http://www.gov.ph/forum/thread.asp?rootID=35220&catID=18. Also look at this website of The Sultanate of Sulu & North Borneo/Sabah - http://www.royalsulu.com/issues.html. It's open flirtation! Anyway, I have let my imagination run wild. Where was I? Oh yes, is it too late for us to do anything about it? 1.7 million! That is a big number. After 30 years, the present facilities and redress given by the authorities thus far seem insignificant in relation to the magnitude that the issue has grown into. I'm not blaming any one party on this. I blame all the leaders for the past 30 years that failed us. No excuse. We're only concern with the numbers, the numbers don't lie. If there is a Key Performance Index(KPI) in place for these leaders, I think they would be below their KPI and what do we do with people who do not meet their KPI, they get fired. More needed to be done and urgently before we are overwhelmed and become stranger in our own land. No one is against migration into this state. It's normal. I think Sabah is still big enough to accommodate migrants but these migrants must be legal, skilled and able to contribute to the economy of the host country and not bleed it. Regardless that the number of the illegals have swelled significantly, despair not my fellow Sabahan. It's better late than never but we must act. There must be an awakening amongst us, the parents, the brothers and sisters, the uncles and aunties, the cousins. We need to proactively do something about our current situation. WE MUST CLEAN OUR HOME FIRST The level of poverty, drug abuse and crimes in Sabah is unacceptable, if not in the increase. Our esteemed elected leaders need to tackle these problems before it spread like wild fire. We have to put our home in order. If I am the head of the household, my first order of the day would be to clear my home of all the rubbish first. Close my door to all unwanted visitors because otherwise, I couldn’t have quality time with my family. My family and I need to have special and quiet time together without unwanted visitors to come in and disturb our time together. We need time alone to heal the wounds. Therefore in this respect, a strategy must be put forth to tackle the issue of illegal immigrants in our midst. Political pressure must be put on every party involved including the originating countries of the illegal immigrants so that these countries would co-operate. Timeframe must be made i.e. a deadline on when we expect how many percent of the total illegal immigrants would be repatriated. We must have a strategy or a business plan so that necessary resources could be allocated in advance. So far what we see is that we are fighting fire as it comes and not anticipating it. The running of the state should be done as though it is a business to certain extend. If the people in business are running their business with many failsafe in place, the people running our state and country should have double of what the former have. I mean, you’re running a country for goodness’ sake. If a business fails, you can always liquidate the business but what if a country fails? Can we liquidate and pack up as easy? Once we have eliminated all external issue i.e. in this case illegal immigrants, then we can concentrate fully on healing our land and people. A very upset Sabahan, Justin I am unabashedly simplistic in my analysis and conclusion of the root causes of the social ills that continue to plague our society(Sabah). Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe people look into it too much and made too much study upon study that the real cause is under their noses but their minds are too clouded to see the real problem. Like I said, for me it’s simple, I blame it squarely on the proliferation of illegal immigrants in our state, I blame it on our apathetic leaders both at state and federal level, I blame it on the inability of our enforcement and government agencies to maximise their existing wherewithal to stem the social ills that we have (come on, stop whining about not having enough resources, do something about it), I blame it on corruption on all levels, I blame it on the attitude of self-preservations amongst our politicians and leaders and last but not least, I blame it on us. Yes, us! We are apathetic too, we are indifferent to the problem until it happens to us.

You read the news, we saw the increased in drug abuse, we read about crimes committed by illegal immigrants and we read about crimes committed both by illegal immigrants and locals that are syabu induced. Yet we do nothing about it! We are arm chair critics; we sit on the fence and wait for someone else to fix our problem for us. We whine and whine and whine. We are comfortable in our status quo. As long as it does not bother me, I won’t lift a finger.

Look at our brothers and sister in the west, they decided to do something about their problem as evident in the last General Election result. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that a change in government is the solution to our problem. For all I know, BN leaders might be the people who have the resources to counter these problems. What I am saying is, get off our butts and do something about it. Take drastic actions. Be willing to be out of our comfort zone. Rock the status quo. Push our leaders to take action. Organise a petition. Whatever. No demonstration please. I for one, is a firm believer of exercising democracy with responsibility. Believe me, democracy is hard to maintain without economic and political stability.

But why do I blame the illegal immigrants for our social ills. If it’s not obvious enough, let me put forth my argument on this matter. Most of these illegal immigrants are uneducated and could not make a living in their own homeland. So they come to Sabah, illegally! Some of them could not find a job and what do they do? They turn to crime. Robbery, Syabu trafficking etc.

Ok, we Sabahans have bad apples in our midst too but the presence of these illegal immigrants only exacerbate the situation. They bring in their imported social ills and corrupt our youngsters. They are also sapping the economy.

It is reported recently that the poverty rate in Sabah is at 23%. That’s many times the number in West Malaysia. Many job and business opportunities that would have gone to the locals have gone to the hands of these illegal immigrants. I don’t need a Phd to deduce that they don’t pay income tax to the government.

There are reports that these illegal immigrants somehow managed to get their hands on fake or forged citizenship documents; stealing our rights including the right to vote. It is alleged that some government officials are involved in this. For the money or for power, what these traitors did is treason in the highest level.

They should be put to death for selling away their country.

Illegal immigrants have been swarming and bleeding the state and the people of Sabah for more or less three decades now. This problem existed since the 1970s and yet, our detention centre in Papar and Sandakan can only accommodate 2,000/- and 1,500/- inmates respectively and our Tawau and Menggatal detention centre can only accommodate 1,500/- and 2,000/- inmates respectively at any given time. That’s totalling 7,000/-. Assuming that the total illegal immigrants in Sabah is in the region of 700,000/-, that would mean that we are only able to detain 1% of the total population of illegal immigrants in Sabah. An article in Wikipedia quoted that Dr Jeffrey Kitingan claimed that the number of illegal immigrants in Sabah numbered to 1.7 million.

As our leaders argue and perhaps politicize this issue, more illegal immigrants are sneaking into Sabah. Evidently, Sabah is still a favourite destination for illegal immigrants. On 4 March 2008, Sandakan Marine Police intercepted three boats and detained 107 Filipino near a seaside squatter colony.

IS IT TOO LATE?

Now the question that keeps bugging me is that, are we already at a stage that we are unable to do anything about this. 1.7 million illegal immigrants and we can only hold 7,000/- of them at any given time? At the same time, more are coming in.

To further compound the problem, apparently Manila is dragging its feet in taking back their own citizens. It is reported that we do not have any such problem with the Indonesian government. Perhaps the authorities in the Philippines are not as efficient as its counterpart in Indonesia. They aren’t eager to take back their citizens whom are languishing in detention centres in Sabah, are they?

If I am a bit coo coo up there or a proponent of the conspiracy theory, I might even go as far as to suggest that perhaps the lack of urgency on the Philippines part is deliberate. It could be systematic invasion. Send in your “settlers” into Sabah, let them sink root in Sabah and propagate. It’s an open secret that they have design on the state of Sabah. No one wants to talk about it but they are talking about it. Look at the discussion at this forum http://www.gov.ph/forum/thread.asp?rootID=35220&catID=18. Also look at this website of The Sultanate of Sulu & North Borneo/Sabah - http://www.royalsulu.com/issues.html. It’s open flirtation!

Anyway, I have let my imagination run wild. Where was I? Oh yes, is it too late for us to do anything about it? 1.7 million! That is a big number. After 30 years, the present facilities and redress given by the authorities thus far seem insignificant in relation to the magnitude that the issue has grown into. I’m not blaming any one party on this. I blame all the leaders for the past 30 years that failed us. No excuse. We’re only concern with the numbers, the numbers don’t lie. If there is a Key Performance Index(KPI) in place for these leaders, I think they would be below their KPI and what do we do with people who do not meet their KPI, they get fired.

More needed to be done and urgently before we are overwhelmed and become stranger in our own land. No one is against migration into this state. It’s normal. I think Sabah is still big enough to accommodate migrants but these migrants must be legal, skilled and able to contribute to the economy of the host country and not bleed it.

Regardless that the number of the illegals have swelled significantly, despair not my fellow Sabahan. It’s better late than never but we must act. There must be an awakening amongst us, the parents, the brothers and sisters, the uncles and aunties, the cousins. We need to proactively do something about our current situation.

WE MUST CLEAN OUR HOME FIRST

The level of poverty, drug abuse and crimes in Sabah is unacceptable, if not in the increase. Our esteemed elected leaders need to tackle these problems before it spread like wild fire.
We have to put our home in order.

If I am the head of the household, my first order of the day would be to clear my home of all the rubbish first. Close my door to all unwanted visitors because otherwise, I couldn’t have quality time with my family. My family and I need to have special and quiet time together without unwanted visitors to come in and disturb our time together. We need time alone to heal the wounds.

Therefore in this respect, a strategy must be put forth to tackle the issue of illegal immigrants in our midst. Political pressure must be put on every party involved including the originating countries of the illegal immigrants so that these countries would co-operate.

Timeframe must be made i.e. a deadline on when we expect how many percent of the total illegal immigrants would be repatriated. We must have a strategy or a business plan so that necessary resources could be allocated in advance. So far what we see is that we are fighting fire as it comes and not anticipating it.

The running of the state should be done as though it is a business to certain extend. If the people in business are running their business with many failsafe in place, the people running our state and country should have double of what the former have. I mean, you’re running a country for goodness’ sake. If a business fails, you can always liquidate the business but what if a country fails? Can we liquidate and pack up as easy?

Once we have eliminated all external issue i.e. in this case illegal immigrants, then we can concentrate fully on healing our land and people.

A very upset Sabahan,

Justin

]]> By: robert wong http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/04/16/kdm-the-new-underclass-in-umnos-sabah-baru/#comment-10345 robert wong Mon, 23 Apr 2007 23:58:31 +0000 http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/04/16/kdm-the-new-underclass-in-umnos-sabah-baru/#comment-10345 If you are an Indonesian christian , or other religion than Muslim, then you would have very hard time or impossible to be the 'soil of Malaysia'. Come to Sabah and see for yourself thanks to Air Asia for the cheap fares, bearded paskitanis are roaming the roads of sabah as this land belongs to them. If you are an Indonesian christian , or other religion than Muslim, then you would have very hard time or impossible to be the ’soil of Malaysia’.

Come to Sabah and see for yourself thanks to Air Asia for the cheap fares, bearded paskitanis are roaming the roads of sabah as this land belongs to them.

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