KUCHING, Nov 4 — Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen today asked Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Openg to publicly name the deputy federal minister who asked the state government to surrender the state’s rights over immigration.

He said Abang Johari should be specific and transparent and not make a general statement to create suspicions and innuendos against all deputy ministers, including himself as deputy minister of domestic trade and consumer affairs.

"I don’t know which deputy minister that Abang Johari was talking about, but certainly not me. I have not talked to him for about two months,” Chong told reporters after the opening of the 18th Sarawak state DAP committee ordinary convention here.

Chong suggested that the so-called deputy minister might not even exist and that the "conversation” between Abang Johari and the deputy minister might not have taken place at all.

"We don’t even know what transpired at the courtesy call between the chief minister and deputy minister,” he said.

DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke, who was present at the press conference, said that it has never been the position of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) federal government to take away Sarawak’s immigration autonomy.

"As far as I am concerned, this issue has been raised in Federal Cabinet meetings,” he said, explaining that the steering committee on the review of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) is going to return rights that have been surrendered or eroded back to Sarawak and Sabah.

"It is not to talk about taking away immigration autonomy, and I can tell you that no member of the steering committee has ever talked about it,” said Loke, who is a member of the committee.

Abang Johari told reporters yesterday that a deputy minister had asked him to surrender the state’s rights over immigration to allow non-Sarawakian Malaysians to enter the state without hindrance.

He claimed that the request was made when the deputy minister paid him a visit a few weeks ago.

The chief minister said he rejected the request because immigration was a state’s right enshrined in the MA63 and the Federal Constitution.