Sabah RCI: Foreigners in Sabah spook enforcement teams

Enforcement personnel from the Kunak District Council are too afraid to enter certain parts of squatter villages, including those built on water, as they have received continuous threats to their safety.

According to Salim Silin who is in charge of the council's squatters' division, his four enforcement staff have been "threatened with knives, and followed" in the course of their duty by some of the 6,000-plus immigrants living there.

"Some places at the ends of the kampung have dilapidated bridges and small pathways, so we cannot access them, but there are also threats to our safety, to the extent that we are afraid to enter," he said.

Asked by royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants in Sabah conducting officer Jamil Aripin if this is the biggest hurdle faced by the enforcement team, he said: "Yes".

He added that the migrants - documented or otherwise - are mostly Suluk and Bugis and make up more than 70 percent of people living in the seven squatter areas in the district.

Salim also noted that an estimated 1,000 undocumented Bajau Laut live in one on-water squatter village, Kampung Kunak 3.

'About 40 pct residents not Malaysian'

Kunak - located between Lahad Datu and Semporna - was one of the districts where gunmen were spotted during the incursion by the self-styled Sulu army, who landed in Lahad Datu in February.

In total, he said, about 40 percent of Kunak residents are not Malaysian.

He stressed that the vice is a problem in the squatter areas with drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, snatch thefts and electricity and water jury-rigging rampant.

The migrants also traded without a licence, with most of those nabbed found to be undocumented.

Asked what he suggests to curb the problem, Salim replied that there should be an immigration and customs office set up in Kunak.

He said his department has sought that the number of enforcement staff be bumped up to 10, although they have yet to receive a response.

Aidila Razak