Tuesday November 8, 2011

More than 80,000 in Sabah to be registered

By DURIE RAINER FONG
durie@thestar.com.my

KOTA KINABALU: More than 80,000 Filipino and Indonesian-Chinese refugees in Sabah from the 1960s are to be recorded under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) latest registration programme.

State Immigration director Mohammad Mentek said refugees from both countries were issued the IMM13 document when they fled to Malaysia following unrest in their home countries.

The document is good for the recipient and dependants, he said, adding that the document holder needed to go to the Immigration Department to renew it every year.

He said the children of initial recipients of the document would be issued papers of their own once they turned 18, pointing out that the Federal Government had stopped issuing new documents to newcomers.

On Saturday, Malaysia had agreed to join hands with UNHCR to register all refugees and asylum-seekers to enable the Government to better protect them.

Earlier this year in Parliament, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz said the Immigration Department had issued 81,000 IMM13 documents to refugees from the southern Philippines and Indonesia in 2009.

United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation (Upko) secretary-general Datuk Wilfred Tangau said the issue in Sabah was not about registering the number of refugees but who should be looking after them and the question of fake IMM13 documents.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/11/8/nation/9858579&sec=nation