Generations of Filipino immigrants are living in squalor in Malaysia and the government must act or face a humanitarian crisis, a lawmaker and official said today.

Sabah lawmaker Eric Majimbun said there are six settlements in the state where immigrants have been living for more than 30 years without basic amenities such as water and electricity.

"What we are asking the government to do is to contain them in one area and provide them with basic necessities, at the very least," Majimbun told AFP , warning of dire conditions that have seen cases of tuberculosis.

According to the state's 2006 census, there are more than 100,000 stateless Filipinos in Sabah who are not considered permanent Malaysian residents, he said.

Majimbun said many of them are families of some 60,000 refugees who fled a separatist rebellion in the 1970s in the Mindanao region of the southern Philippines, across the narrow Sulu sea from Sabah.

The lawmaker said the refugees had been issued temporary residency visas when they first arrived in Malaysia but had since been neglected.

"The original 61,000 Filipinos with a social visit pass issued by Malaysia have since scattered. What we have now in the settlements are the new generation, their children and family members," Majimbun said.

The immigrants are so well integrated they speak local dialects and look like Sabahans, he said.

Suhakam wants lasting solution

But the settlers' children, and their offspring, do not have Malaysian citizenship despite being born here, or marrying Malaysians.

"Nothing has been done for them because the government still feels they are staying here on a temporary basis," said Majimbun, whose Sepanggar constituency contains two of the settlements.

In Telipok, a settlement some 25 kilometres from state capital Kota Kinabalu, a population of 5,000 live in some 650 wooden houses with no electricity, water or schools, he said.

Malaysia's Human Rights Commission called on the government to find a lasting solution before there was a humanitarian crisis.

"Citizens or not, we are highlighting a humanitarian problem. They should have basic amenities accorded to them or we could be dealing with a crisis situation," commissioner Denison Jayasooria told AFP .

"We can't just let people live like that in constant limbo, in poverty and without dignity," he said.