(June 10): A Sabah lawmaker today slammed Putrajaya and the state government for their indifference in resolving the issue of illegal immigrants, following the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) report released in Kota Kinabalu last December.

Sandakan MP Stephen Wong said Sabahans were disappointed that the technical committee tasked with proposing recommendations to tackle the problem was taking its own time to complete its report, despite it being more than six months since the findings of the RCI were released.

"The committee has said that it will take them a year to complete the report on recommendations. We are totally disappointed with this development," he told The Malaysian Insider.

Wong was referring to the technical working committee and the permanent committee set up in December after the RCI report was released to deal with the problem of illegal immigrants.

Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman and federal Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi are both chairs of the permanent committee while Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan is the head of the management panel.

Pairin's panel, Putrajaya said, would study issues raised in the RCI report and “make recommendations to the permanent committee".

However, Pairin was recently reported as saying that the report on the recommendations would only be released at year-end, adding that the committee did not want to leave out any good ideas.

“We don’t want to be hasty and just simply finish and complete the report, we have to be serious and the recommendations must be practical,” he was quoted as saying by Sabahkini in May.

Training his guns at the deputy chief minister, Wong said Pairin did not need a year to finish the report as he had most of the information on illegal immigrants "at his fingertips".

"Pairin has been holding materials on illegal immigrants that have come out since many years back. He has all this knowledge and all the information at his disposal that it makes me wonder why they need so long. It is not logical.

"He has been holding all this information in his hands but why does he need one year?"

Sabah folk, he said, were also disappointed that the RCI report had not been debated in the Dewan Rakyat, which could have also increased awareness among other lawmakers on the severity of the issue.

"But it has not and it is obvious the report is not being taken seriously by the government.

"And the recommendation of the RCI report was to set up a committee to look into the recommendations but that committee then set up a sub-committee to do what it was supposed to do," the frustrated DAP lawmaker said, referring to the permanent and technical committees.

The RCI was formed on August 11, 2012 to investigate the problems relating to citizenship and immigrants in Sabah.

The inquiry was closely related to Project IC, the alleged systematic granting of citizenship to foreigners.

The RCI began its public hearing at the Kota Kinabalu Court Complex on January 14 last year with a five-member panel led by former Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak, Tan Sri Steve Shim Lip Kiong.

A total of 211 witnesses were called to testify at the hearing which ended on September 20, 2013.

Among them were former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Harris Salleh, former Sabah chief minister Datuk Seri Yong Teck Lee, former senator Dr Chong Eng Leong, and former Internal Security Act detainee Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan. – The Malaysian Insider