The Immigration Department has issued 81,000 refugee status documents (IMM13 document) as of 2009 to illegal immigrants to enable then to move freely without travelling passes in Sabah and Labuan, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz said the documents were only given to two groups of illegal immigrants in Sabah namely Indonesian Chinese refugees and refugees of the civil war in the southern Philippines.

"The provision of the documents to the two groups of refugees were made on humantarian grounds and they were given passport exemption by the government to live temporary in Sabah and Labuan," he said when replying to a question by Marcus Mojigoh (BN-Putatan), who wanted to know the total number of foreigners who hade been issued the IMM13 document.

Nazri said there were six schemes for settling the refugees from the southern Philippines as developed by UNHCR and gazetted by the Sabah state government.

'They are Kg Hidayat in Tawau, Kg Selamat in Semporna, Kg Bahagia in Sandakan, Kg Kinarut and Kg Telipot in Kota Kinabalu and Kg Muslim in Labuan," he said.

Nonetheless, he said as UNHCR could not afford to undertake the cost of settlement since 1970s, many of them were forced to live outside of their settlement area by becoming squatters.

"The Indonesian Chinese refugees settled in the urban areas of Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan and Tawau," he said.

Replying to a supplementary question from Chua Soon Bui (Ind-Tawau) whether the holder of IMM13 documents were given citizenship, Nazri said they were not given the status.

On July 26 last year, Chief Minister of Sabah Musa Aman had said that the issuing of IMM13 documents had been stopped since 1984.

- Bernama