The illegal entry of foreigners into Sabah could be the reason why the state recorded an 'extraordinary' increase in its population over the last 35 years.

Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) commissioner Mohd Hamdan Adnan said in Kota Kinabalu today that the latest statistics showed that the population in Sabah had increased more than four folds from about 697,900 in 1970 to almost three million in 2004.

In comparison, neighbouring Sarawak's total population grew from around one million to 2.3 million over the same period, he said.

"This is quite puzzling and of course, Malaysian citizens especially the people of Sabah have the right to know the contributing factors of this extraordinary increase," he was quoted by Bernama as saying .

"Our borders (Sabah) are porous and they (illegal immigrants) can easily sneak in even after they had been sent back to their home countries.

"Based on feedback, some of the detainees at the temporary detention centres in Sabah, once they are sent back, they try to come back to the state under different names," he said.

Mostly Filipinos

On delayed deportations of detainees at the temporary detention centres particularly in Sandakan and Tawau, Hamdan said the problem cropped up because some of the detainees did not possess proper travel documents.

As such, he suggested "the country which had a large number of detainees" to set up an office in Sabah to facilitate the issuance of valid travel document.

He said more than 50 per cent of the detainees in temporary detention centres throughout the state were Filipinos.

Meanwhile the Consumer Association of Sabah (Cash) proposed the setting up of an Independent Commission to investigate Sabah's `big' population.

Its president Patrick Sindu told Bernama that if the claims are true, the commission must find out how so many of the foreigners could own MyKad.

"The source of the problem should be identified and solved as we don't want this state to end up like Palestine where at the end of the day its citizens had to squat on their own land," he said.