by – Product of the System

An Unbooked Pregnancy

A 42-year-old lady presents with strong contraction pains at 3am. Of Filipino descent and speaking no Bahasa Malaysia, she was unable to provide any valuable clinical history pertinent to her current pregnancy.

In addition, she did not seek any antenatal care. A multiparous lady with 12 other children, she gave birth uneventfully but her premature 31-week baby developed breathing complications from his immature lungs.

He was referred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Likas, where he was treated for the next 48 days with costly first-line medications and neonatal supplements. Further investigations revealed congenital syphilis contracted from his mother.

Unable to settle the five-figure hospital bill, the father paid a meagre RM 10.00, vowing to settle the outstanding amount on their next clinic visit.

Seen in the clinic one month later, the couple returned with their child and – brand new Malaysian ICs. Declaring themselves now to be Malaysian Bajaus, they were absolved of all their hospital debts and spirited onto the red carpet of Bumiputeraship.

A Neglected Child

A frail 3-year-old Indonesian boy was admitted for severe dehydration from a two-week history of infective diarrhea.

The second youngest of 14 children, the family lives in a 5m X 8m stilt house built over sea water, aptly known as kampong air. They draw water and electricity from illegal connections made stealthily to the homes of local Sabahans.

Domestic waste and human excrement are disposed off by open sea dumping and drop latrines. On examination, the child was drowsy in hypotensive shock and was severely malnourished.

Over a period of 4 weeks, he was given intensive care and nursed back to health with adequate rehydration and total parenteral nutrition costing RM 1,000 per day.

Upon discharge, the parents swore themselves to be Bajau, flashed newly-minted Mykads and laid claim to the privilege of free healthcare.

From pendatang tanpa izin just a month ago, they’ve become warganegara Islam and are therefore eligible to the broad spectrum of bumiputera privileges under UMNO’s New Economic Policy.

The child went back to the family home, where he nonchalantly resumed his daily routine of waddling barefooted in the filthy mud of kampong air littered with human excrement.

A Jobless Lad

An unemployed 28-year-old man was admitted after a freak road accident. After a heavy alcohol binge, he went on a terror joyride with a friend equally under the influence.

He suffered a grade 3 open fractures of both his right forearm bones with multiple tendon and nerve cuts. He underwent a complicated and costly emergency surgery, the first of many to come.

Over the next two months, he underwent repeated reconstructive procedures — readjustments of metal fixator, wound debridements and skin flaps.

He was seen in the clinic a week after discharge whereby he now professes to be a Bajau. His outstanding hospital bills were consequently declared null and void.

A Promiscuous Husband

A 56-year-old man from Pulau Gaya presented with high fever associated with severe headache and was found to be jaundiced on examination.

He has three wives and 16 children, none of whom were schooling. Confessing to a long habit of extra-marital sexual activities, further diagnostic work-up confirmed HIV, Hepatitis C, and syphilis. A series of scans were required to exclude HIV-related cerebral toxoplasmosis and liver cirrhosis from chronic hepatitis C.

A fisherman by profession, he was unable to pay for the scans. He pleaded for three days after which his wives presented at the hospital with a Mykad fresh from the stoves of Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara.

Yes, here in UMNO’s Sabah, everyone can be a Bumiputera Bajau — the Indonesians, Filipinos and Pakistanis too.

Corruption in a league of its own

It is increasingly incredulous to believe that that the BN government had any genuine intention to root out the cancer of illegal immigration in Sabah.

While Singapore, Australia and the United Kingdom are harvesting the skill, talent and services of the truly cemerlang, gemilang and terbilang of Malaysian shores, UMNO’s Tanah Melayu is instead proactively inflicting itself with infectious diseases and serious crimes with the most uneducated, unskilled and unimmunized imports from neighbouring Philipines and Indonesia.

Far from the lame excuses given by Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak, the crux of the issue is not an unmanageable coastline, but an insatiable greed for power and wealth among the Barisan Nasional politicians.

Corruption has reached its highest degree in the state of Sabah. Here, citizenship has become a priceless commodity that can be bought and sold at the whims and fancies of UMNO.

Even as the local Kadazandusun Murut (KDM) population remains trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and illiteracy, Filipinos, Indonesians and even Pakistanis are masquerading as Bajaus, purchasing Malaysian ICs and a lifetime of bumiputera privileges for a meagre sum of RM 100.

These overnight bumiputeras have already overtaken the locals in sheer number and brute strength in Lahad Datu, Kota Belud, Semporna, Likas, Sandakan and Tawau. Pulau Gaya is virtually a mini-Philipines in Malaysian waters. Its notoriety for violence is such that even the armed forces fear to tread.

While the sociodemography of Sabah has already undergone a politically-maneuvered radical transformation, the true folly of BN’s Project IC is only beginning to show.

Corruption kills, literally

Already, Sabah is infamous for being the land most endemic with tuberculosis, thanks to these non-immunized illegals. In 2006, Sabah added a feather to its cap when it clinched the unenviable title as the state with the highest number of newly diagnosed HIV cases.

The overwhelming prevalence of highly infectious diseases among illegal immigrants is consuming our limited human and financial resources. Sexually transmitted diseases like HIV, syphilis, hepatitis B, C and gonorrhea are now spreading like wild fire.

So are infective diarrhea and other environmental illnesses, many thanks to our Project IC citizens utilizing our rivers and seas like a gargantuan natural sewage tank. The battle on vector-borne infections like dengue and malaria is virtually lost.

While Health Inspectors impose fines and summonses on local citizens for harboring pockets of potential Aedes breeding sites, the unhygienic and wholly-filthy settlements of the UMNO’s prized immigrants are conveniently overlooked.

The whole effort of vector control is but an exercise in vanity and exhibitionism.

In the name of so-called humanity to these supposed under-privileged people, the Health Ministry has vicariously deprived our very own citizens of services that they paid taxes for.

Foreigners form at least 30%-50% of patients in government hospitals and clinics, stretching our health resources so thin that Malaysians have to contend with suboptimal care.

In the hospitals, it is not uncommon for our own local citizens to be dumped onto the floor while their Project M counterparts occupy proper beds.

It is also not infrequent for illegal immigrants to receive intensive care and ventilator support at the expense of equally ill Malaysian citizens that could have otherwise been saved with the proper facilities.

As cheap Filipino cigarettes and unpurified alcohol become easily available especially to our young children, Sabah can expect an epidemic of respiratory diseases and alcohol-related illnesses in the very near future – if not already. At present, clinicians are already witnessing lung cancers and alcoholic liver disease among Sabahans at an age as young as 24 years.

The whole set-up makes no sense. It seems as though there is a concentrated effort to appease these particular group of people. Is humanity really the reason behind the Malaysian Ministry of Health’s peculiar and unconditional generosity to illegal immigrants or is there a politically-savvy ulterior motive?

As the Malay peribahasa goes, kera di hutan disusukan, anak di rumah mati kelaparan.

A tickling social timebomb

The street kids of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah are already a notorious state entity. Unkempt kids who should be studying instead spend their days peddling cigarettes and alcoholic brew or merely roaming about begging for cash in eateries and places of interest.

In recent years, their numbers have taken an exponential rise. The social consequences will be damning when these street children grow up to become unemployed and unemployable young men.

Rape, murder, home break-ins and petty thefts are already daily affairs in Sabah, in tandem with the increasing number of foreigners.

The flea markets throughout Sabah tell a great detail of their side activities. Stolen items ranging from shoes and t-shirts to handphones and lap tops are sold brazenly in broad daylight, uncannily oblivious to the law enforcers but not to the locals who fall victim to these unschooled, idle youngsters.

The press of Sabah provides a daily painful reminder. The local Daily Express dedicates a whole page on crime in Sabah, much of it involving foreigners.

While money and assets lost can be re-earned and regained, the lives and dignity of murder and rape victims can never be restored.

Many a family has been torn apart in more subtle ways. Young, unschooled foreign ladies form the bulk of commercial sex workers throughout Sabah. Once blissful families are destroyed by the husbands’ extramarital affairs with the literally cheap foreign girls, many of them barely past teenage. A pregnant mother of five was recently found to have contracted HIV/AIDS from her husband’s chronic infidelity with Filipino guest relations officers from the many karaokes throughout Sabah.

A state conspiracy

Far from even attempting to control the entry and proliferation of foreigners in Sabah, the UMNO state and federal governments are in effect vigorously wooing these people.

The Customs Department gladly issues and renews work permits without any proper check on the person’s background and current health. As a result, even someone with active pulmonary tuberculosis can resume working and spreading their Mycobacterium in Sabah.

The National Registry Department freely issues birth certificates to any foreigner born in Sabah, a first big step before full bumiputera-ship in later life. Mysteriously, such documents are issued only to Muslim foreigners. The predominantly Catholic East Timorese and occasional Catholic Filipino are somehow denied such documents.

The State Health Department makes Sabah even more homely to foreigners by offering virtually free healthcare. Chemotherapy, total parenteral nutrition, CT/MRI scans and major surgeries are all provided without any obligation for the costs to be settled. In other words, foreigners receive equal access to healthcare like any other bona fide Malaysian citizen.

BN’s actual stand in the issue of illegal immigration is fully revealed in times of elections. Local Sabahans find themselves sidelined as foreigners who do not speak a word of Bahasa Malaysia suddenly possess voting privileges. Such allegations fly like wild fire in each election season but needless to say, were never investigated or followed up by the Election Commission.

The State Land Office too, panders to UMNO’s aspirations. Much land has been taken from the locals and allocated to Project IC citizens. These distressed voices of the needy and lowly locals will probably never be heard as their own Kadazandusun Murut leaders cave in to the love of money.

Not a Generalization

This article in no way implies that all immigrants are partakers of hooliganism. As with every issue in life, there are two sides to a coin and no blanket statement can ever be justified.

Nevertheless, unlike the UMNO politicians, the daily experiences of the man-on-the-street do not lie. The threat and menace of foreigners in Sabah and Malaysia in general can never be understated and downplayed.

In Sabah particularly, the feared “reverse-takeover” has only begun, with the Barisan Nasional firmly seated in the director’s chair.

The End is Imminent

Charity as they say, begins at home. The BN government can show more generosity and charity to our locals in areas of hardcore poverty like Kota Marudu and Ranau instead of quietly strengthening and empowering the Project IC beneficiaries.

With a muted media and a money-pacified Parti Bersatu Sabah, UMNO will inexorably remain as the supreme master of Sabah for quite some time to come.

Backed by a steady supply of loyal, overnight Muslim bumiputeras who potentially double up as useful Mat Rempits when the need arises, the peace-loving local population is increasingly hapless.

The biggest losers are none other than local non-Muslim population who stands in UMNO’s way of establishing an Islamic state.

There will come a day where the Sabah we once knew ceases to exist. That is the day when a MALPHILINDO version comes into existence. That, I believe, will be a dream come true for UMNO.

Selamat Hari Kemerdekaan, fellow genuine citizens. Selamat Hari Malaysia too.