KOTA KINABALU, July 25 — Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) has slammed Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) acting president Datuk Seri Maximus Ongkili over his accusations that nothing new or beneficial had been done by Warisan within 60 days of the party’s governance.

Christopher Masudal, who is the Special Officer to Warisan deputy president Darell Leiking, said the accusations made by Ongkili clearly depicted his inability to accept the changes for the betterment of Sabahans that were slowly happening in the state.

"Ongkili claimed that nothing new or beneficial has been done by Warisan within 60 days. But how can that be when immediately after forming the new state government, Warisan has established the State Education Ministry and through this new ministry, Sabah will see equal distribution of funds to assist the Chinese, English and Malay-medium schools in the state.

"The proposal to convert the Tawau and Keningau Teacher’s Training Institutes as vocational and polytechnic institutes proposed during the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration which received much objections by Sabahans, will be scrapped and both facilities shall be retained as teachers training institutes,” he said in a statement today.

He also took a swipe at Ongkili over his accusation that the new state government was doing nothing and only disturbing policy decisions that benefited the people.

Masudal said Ongkili must understand it that the reason why Sabahans rejected BN in 14th general election was due to the very same policy decisions made by BN that Ongkili claimed to be beneficial, but caused much dissatisfaction and resentment among the people, citing the awarding of communal title to native Sabahans amongst others.

As for the regulations on illegal immigrants in Sabah as proposed by the state government, Masudal said, Ongkili may have forgotten that in 2011, a 12-strong member team from PBS had expressed their support to the efforts to document all the illegal immigrants in Sabah through the usage of the biometric system so as to prevent them from obtaining fake IDs as their fingerprints will be centralised.

Masudal said PBS had also stated their stand on the issue clearly whereby PBS was not anti-foreign workers and in fact, the party welcomed them because it understood the need to have these labourers to fuel industries in Sabah provided that these foreign workers are being properly documented and should never be allowed to become citizens.

"So, what difference is it with what the state government is trying to do now and what PBS wanted? We want to catalogue and regulate the illegal immigrants in Sabah in almost the same way as how PBS had wanted it to be which is by using biometric system,” he said. — Bernama