KIMANIS, Jan 16 — Tan Sri Pairin Kitingan was lying when he claimed that the proposal for the implementation of the Sabah Temporary Resident Pass (PRSS) was not made at a meeting of the Technical Committee on Management of Foreigners in Sabah which he had chaired, said Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal.
He said there were minutes of the committee meeting on the matter which took place in March 2016, chaired by Pairin as the then Sabah deputy chief minister, and also attended by among others State Secretary Tan Sri Sukarti Sukiman, Sabah Police Commissioner Datuk Abdul Rashid Harun and State Attorney Datuk Mariati Robert.
“I did not make it up or invent it. If (they claim) I lied, this is the proof (I’m telling the truth) — the minutes of this meeting were prepared by them,” he said, while showing the document to reporters after the launch of Telekom Malaysia’s Unifi broadband service in Pekan Bongawan near here today.
Mohd Shafie was asked to comment on Pairin’s speech at a ceremony organised by Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) in Kimanis last night, where he said that the proposal for the implementation of the PRSS was not discussed by the committee chaired by him.
Mohd Shafie, who is also the president of Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan), reiterated the government’s decision to implement the Sabah Temporary Pass (PSS) with some improvements on the previous government’s proposal.
“This is what the previous government had proposed and not all of them (suggestions) have been rejected. The good ones were improved upon. That is the approach taken to solve the problem (of illegal immigrants) but do not twist the facts by saying there were no minutes of meeting,” he said.
He said the state government had introduced the PSS as a temporary pass, in contrast to the proposal by the previous government, which was to use PRSS as a way to provide permanent residency to holders of the IMM13 document, census certificate and burung-burung card involving 136,055 people.
He said the PSS would also be able to deal with forgery of documents as it uses iris scans for verification.
In September 2019, the Foreigners Management Committee in Sabah agreed to issue PSS beginning June 1 this year.
Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, when announcing the decision, said the PSS was to replace three documents issued to long-staying foreigners in Sabah — the IMM13, census certificate and burung-burung card. — Bernama
