The Consumer Association of Sabah and Labuan (Cash) will continue its relentless efforts to stop the authorities from issuing identity cards to foreigners via the 'back door', said its president Patrick Sindhu.

He told malaysiakini that one of the measures being contemplated was going to court to seek an injunction but declined to elaborate.

"Project IC is still going on, maybe not so obvious as before," added his deputy Joshua Kong.

Sabah NGOs were disturbed by a statement made by a top National Registration Department (NRD) official before a hearing of the parliamentary select committee chaired by the Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Bernard Dompok that all ICs issued to foreigners were genuine and valid.

Cash claimed that many of these ICs were allegedly issued through dubious means with the connivance of certain Sabah politicians to beef up their political support.

It collected more than 100,000 signatures and presented a memorandum to the king,Dompok and IGP Musa Hassan calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to be set up to get into the bottom of the problems in Sabah.

So far, the government has not responded, except for Musa who said such a comission was unnecessary as the police could conduct investigations.

Jeffrey questioned

Following that, the police took statements from a senior opposition leader Dr Jeffrey Kitingan who was quizzed by police in Kota Kinabalu recently regarding certain information contained in his book Justice for Sabah .

"It is always clarifications on my part they want to some of the things mentioned in the book, including the IC issue and population figures," Jeffrey told malaysiakini in Kota Kinabalu today.

Government statistics put the state's population figure at 2.8 million but NGOs such as Cash have insisted the actual figure is much higher - 3.5 million to four million, more than half of them foreigners, largely from Indonesia and the Philippines.

Jeffrey estimated that there are at least 250,000 undocumented foreigners in Sabah, most of them possibly employed in the plantation sector, besides some 600,000 foreigners who have been issued with ICs over the years.

The presence of a large number of undocumented foreigners in Sabah is one of the issues that are likely to dominate the campaign in the next general election. The presence of foreigners have been blamed for the declining quality of life, the deprivation of jobs affecting locals and security problem.