A leading Sabah-based NGO leader wants the government to review the whole concept of the levy vis-a-vis illegal and legal foreign workers.

According to him, money is not the only way to resolve the problem of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Sabah.

"Yes, all foreigners should be properly registered, regularised and monitored for the well-being of the people, including the workers themselves," said Consumer Association of Sabah and FT Labuan (Cash) deputy president Joshua Kong in a statement to Malaysiakini today.

However, he said, the levy and the associated costs (registration and document costs) of employing foreigners to work in Malaysia is very costly.

The other aspect is how is the money raised through such levy being utilised.

sabah illegal immigrant Kong said this as Malaysian authorities launched what the government described as a massive exercise to track down illegal immigrants in Sabah.

"The moral question here is that if illegal affairs can be bought with some money, it only goes to show that rampant official corruption is also acceptable hence I call this the Government’s Rampant Excessive Exploitation and Destruction (Greed)."

The levy is not only adding costs to the consumers but it is unsustainable for small and surviving businesses and factories.

The outspoken NGO leader, who is an accountant by training, said the government needs to consider incentives for the locals to make the extra effort to be employed in such sectors dominated by foreigners.

"I think it is indeed short-term thinking for a long-term solution as the total costs of local workers versus foreign workers may come out to be the same and that is when we are talking of building a nation with our own people rather than relying on foreigners," he said.

Kong had presented a paper at a forum on illegal foreign workers organised by the Federation of Chinese Associations Sabah in Kota Kinabalu on Aug 2, the day the massive operation to track illegal foreigners in Sabah started.

'Dubai of the East'

On the suggestion that Sabah be transformed into 'the Dubai of the East' as far as foreigners in the work force is concerned, Kong said one should know first how Dubai handles the 80 percent of foreigners in its work force.

"(But) how can Sabah match that when the state has been at the lowest level employing all sorts of questionable people?" he asked.

As for the on-going exercise by the Immigration Department to register all illegal workers in Sabah for three months without the need of going away from Sabah, he commented: "I think there is an overlap here as it is not so easy to do that when there are up to a million illegal people in Sabah when most of them are illegally employed in Sabah."

Whatever the consequences of such twin actions, he said it is likely that these people would be tempted to hide moving from Kota Kinabalu to other places and then return to Kota Kinabalu later.

"Imagine, if there are more than one million foreign workers in Sabah, how much money would be needed to pay for all those levy and related costs when the local economy is largely depressed with the latest food and fuel prices upheaval," he added.

He said while crime rates may go up coupled with all those critical issues in the economy vis-a-vis the labour force in Sabah and Malaysia, an easy solution is not possible with a ‘rotten system’ in place.

The immediate approach of the undocumented people and their employers would be to hide to avoid detection by the task force, and three months can mean more hardship for the local people who depend on illegal foreigners as their workers in their business and projects.

Population boom

The NGO leader said the Immigration Department's ad-hoc arrangement where foreigners already working in the state illegally can be registered without going out of the state for a period of five years is self-defeating.

"Such a practice may further increase Sabah’s population by several folds as these workers may bring in their wives and their children. So there is also the likelihood that in five years some of them could have a few children who would be born in Sabah," he pointed out.

There are also cases where these foreign workers marry locals.

So Sabah, already with an extraordinary population boom since 1990, including the dubious citizens under Project IC, would face another wave of population increase in this decade as it is likely that such newly-registered workers may refuse to leave because of the current government policy towards such people, he added.

"When that happens, what kind of prosperity are we dreaming of when poverty is definitely worse off as we have seen happening in Mindanao and elsewhere in the region," he said, adding that whatever wealth created would be consumed by such an extraordinary population and the businessmen migrating with their wealth.

"Simply it is bad for nation building with a very big illegal work force. The balance sheet of contribution of the foreigners would be in deficit," he said.