SANDAKAN: A census by the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) at four water villages in Sandakan found they had a total of 4,928 houses with 24,931 occupants.
Director-General Mohammad Mentek said 58% of the houses or 2,847 houses were occupied by non-citizens while the remaining 42% or 2,081 were Malaysian households.
He said Kampung Mangkalinau recorded the highest number of non-citizen households at 70%.
The number of houses occupied by non-citizens was also high in the water village of Kampung Forest (including Good View) at 55% (653 houses) whereas 536 houses (45%) belonged to locals.
“However, houses occupied by locals in Kampung Muhibbah and Cahaya Baru surpassed non-citizens,” he told reporters after chairing the post-mortem on the census here yesterday.
Mohammad said the census went smoothly and found 244 houses were vacant.
“We are going to carry out a “Mopping-Up” exercise and will ask Statistic Department officals to return to the water villages to carry out a further census on the vacant houses,” he said.
He did not rule out the possibility of the vacant houses being occupied by illegal immigrants who fled during the census exercise.
He said no arrests were made during the census operation.
Mohammad also denied Esscom had demolished several houses in the affected water villages during the census operation.
“Not even a single house was demolished. Such an allegation is unfounded,” he said.
Mohammad said the census operation had received close cooperation from villagers and community leaders.
He said one of the main challenges of the operation was the unpredicatable weather and poor infrastructure including narrow bridges or narrow jetties.
Mohammad said a total of 171 of enumerators and 258 officials from state and federal government departments and agencies including security teams were involved in the operation.
Mohammad said the outcome of the operation will be thoroughly scrutinised prior to submission to the government for further action, including determining whether the affected villagers need to be relocated or otherwise.
Mohammad said Sandakan was one of the three districts in the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (Esszone), besides Semporna and Lahad Datu, selected for the pioneer census programme.
Esszone covers 10 districts, the other seven being Kudat, Kota Marudu, Pitas, Beluran, Kinabatangan, Kunak and Tawau. It was established following the violent intrusion by armed Sulu terrorists in Kampung Tanduo, Lahad Datu, in February last year.
-Bernama
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