SABAH RCI A Malaysian born to parents from the indigenous Rungus tribe in Sabah had to wait close to three decades before getting an identity card.

                       

Charles Magadap said this happened because his parents did not want to walk for 12 hours from Kampung Sampil in Matunggong, Kota Marudu, to the National Registration Department (NRD) office in town when he was born in 1964.

"There were no roads then and we didn't have vehicles," he testified today before the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into illegal immigrants in Sabah.

The 93rd witness, Magadap said he spent most of his life using a temporary identity card application receipt he received when he applied for an IC in 1976, at the age of 12.

"I applied using a certificate of status, endorsed by the district officer ... and waited until 1985.

"In 1985, I checked with the Kota Marudu NRD and was told that certificates of status were no longer recognised and that I had to obtain a (document on) late registration of birth.

"I did so in 2000, after submitting many documents including school certificates, statements by the village chief and midwife, and family photos and was called for an interview in 2002. I received my birth certificate on Sept 11, 2003 and my IC in March 2004, at the age of 40.”

Landless squatters now

Magadap also told the RCI that he and many other Rungus from Matunggong have since moved to a squatter village in Kota Kinabalu, as they had been ousted from their ancestral land by a company, Syarikat Bandaraya.

"One company representative told us we have to leave as the land has been taken over," the security personnel said to a question from commissioner Herman Luping.

He said 3,700 of them were ousted from 60,000 hectares of land and "we ran to the city as (we) no longer had land to work on, and no job prospects in the village".

Magadap said they had referred the matter to the local assemblyperson and MP, but were told that they were in the dark about the land transfer as well.

He and the other Rungus are now squatting on state land in Bukit Punai, and have received notice to vacate as the land is earmarked for the construction of a new court complex.

"We have appealed to the Kota Marudu MP (Maximus Ongkili) to help us obtain public housing. If nothing happens, we will have to find other land to build our homes on," he added.

Non-citizen students 'not a burden'

Meanwhile, the RCI's 95th witness, recently retired Sabah Education Department director Muhiddin @ Mohd Anas Yusin said children who are non-citizens are not a burden to the education in Sabah.

He said that this is because at 1,036 in 2012, they make up less than 1 percent of the total population of students registered in government and government-aided schools in the state.

While there is a problem of crowded classrooms, he said that this is mostly in the city and due to urbanisation in Tawau, Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu, rather than the growth in non-citizen students.

He said the education department's policy is to accept any student with at least one parent with a Malaysian identity card.

The child must also have a document from a village chief to show that he or she is the child of the parent with the IC.

These children - considered non-citizens as they do not have birth certificates - pay RM120 a year in primary school and RM240 in secondary school, while no fees are charged to citizen pupils.

"We do not question if the document is real or fake... On a personal level, I also feel that all children have the right to education and it is better for these children to grow up educated than not," he said.