325,000 'KAD BURUNG-BURUNG' ISSUED

KOTA KINABALU: The Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah was told that the Parti Bersatu Sabah State Government registered 325,000 mostly undocumented foreigners during a census exercise from 1987 to 1992.

Testifying at the public hearing here, Monday, former head of the Settlement Unit in the Chief Minister's Department, Abd Jaapar Alip, said a study on the transient population in Sabah was conducted in 1987 that also involved registration of foreigners.

It was done in two phases with the first being a census conducted in collaboration with the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) by going to houses where suspected illegal immigrants were staying.

The second phase was to register them for the issuance of the Temporary Registration Card.

According to him, those registered in the census would be asked to fill up a form after which they would be given the Temporary Identification Receipt, which was popularly known then as 'Kad Burung-Burung' due to the Kingfisher bird State emblem imprinted on it.

After all the particulars in the forms had been keyed in into the computer at the unit's office the Temporary Registration Card would be issued and the 'Kad Burung-Burung' returned back to the unit.

To a question by Conducting Officer, Manoj Kurup, Abd Jaapar said the document was not recognised by the National Registration Department (NRD) as a valid identification document.

For the record, Manoj is one of the three Conducting Officers appointed by the Yang di Pertuan Agong to assist the RCI. The others are Dato' Azmi Ariffin and Jamil Aripin.

"It was issued to all foreigners of various nationalities," he said.

He also admitted that the census exercise was actually to find illegal immigrants in the State.

Earlier, he said the Settlement Unit (then known as Settlement Division) was established in the Chief Minister's Department in 1976 during the Berjaya Government mainly to look after the five Filipino refugees' settlement scheme located in Kinarut, Telipok, Kampung Bahagia Sandakan, Kampung Selamat Semporna and Kampung Hidayat Tawau.

The unit was the authority in determining refugee and displaced people status up until 1984 where the number of people given such refugee status was 73,000, he said.

He said there were five criterion for an individual to be qualified as refugee namely those who came from Region Nine, which he explained was Southern Philippines; those who are directly involved in conflict; arrived in Sabah between 1970 and 1984; must be a Muslim and; "willing to stay permanently in Sabah."

When asked, he said those 'applying' to be given refugee status sometimes came by themselves or brought by others from among themselves.

Asked why the period was only up to 1984, he said it was because hostility had stopped in the southern Philippines that year.

The applicants would be interviewed by specially trained personnel of the unit, he said, adding that often these people would not have any identification document.

"It was only based on their words," he said, adding that the decision would be made by the person who conducted the interview.

After a person was found to be qualified, a Registration Acknowledgement Receipt would be issued and the application form submitted to the Immigration Department for the issuance of IMM13 document or known then as Social Work Pass, he said.

After the Immigration Department had issued the IMM13/Social Work Pass the refugees would be called to return the Registration Acknowledgement Receipt to the unit and take their IMM13/Social Work Pass.

According to him, the unit had kept a record of all the serialised receipts issued from 1976 to 1985.

Refugees who wished to stay in one of the five settlement schemes would be issued with the Settlement Identification Card although it is not recognised by the NRD as a valid identification document, he said.

Abd Jaapar said that by September 1985, the State Government had directed that the exercise to be stopped with immediate effect. Asked if he knew the reason for it, he answered in the negative.

"But there was a change in State Government (PBS took over the State Government from Berjaya)," he said, adding that shortly after the unit was tasked to handle the 'Kad Burung-Burung' through the study on transient population.

Abd Jaapar said that in the course of the study they also discovered there some 9,000 refugees who were left out from the 1976-1985 registration exercise.

"We raised the matter to the higher authorities and discussions were held with them such as the Immigration Department É and the decision was to allow us to review the list and see if there were those qualified to be given refugee status," he said.

He said there was a standard operating procedure (SOP) which had been discussed and agreed upon by the Immigration Department that served as guidelines in the processing the refugee status.

However, Abd Jaapar said as of 2007 he did not know whether the 9,000 people had been issued with the IMM13 to give them the refugee status because he was transferred to the Water Department in 2008.

He told the RCI panel that when he was transferred the forms had yet to be sent to the Immigration Department for processing.

"I don't know," he said, adding he was replaced by Mohd Jairi Jaya when asked by RCI Chairman, Tan Sri Steve Shim.

Shim then asked the Conducting Officers to think if it was necessary to subpoena Abd Jaapar's successor to testify in the public hearing before the RCI.

Meanwhile, when asked by the Conducting Officer the reason the unit did not refer the 325,000 illegal immigrants detected during the census in 1985 to 1992, Abd Jaafar said the unit had in fact also provided the information to the relevant authority.

"Maybe the IDS had also done it," he said.

He also did not think that the Federal Special Task Force (FSTF) was set up to take over the duty of the unit because if it were, the Settlement Unit would have been closed down.

Apart from the five main refugee settlement schemes, he said there were about 33 refugee villages throughout Sabah.

The unit did not include the refugee settlement scheme in Kampung Muslim Labuan after it became a Federal Territory, he said.

Right after that, Shim adjourned the proceeding due to an emergency, which was later found only to be a bomb scare. (DE)