SANDAKAN – Heavily pregnant Dina, 39, could only hide and watch her 10-year-old son being arrested by police at a wood factory here.
In 2021 this writer had interviewed about 10 women around Sandakan, all of whom were mothers whose presence in Sabah was deemed illegal as they had entered Malaysia without valid passes.
The interviews focused on how they had to resort to home births as they risked getting arrested if they were to go to the hospital; not to mention that the hospital charges are twice as high for non-citizens.
Dina, a mother of six, was one of the interviewees.
After telling stories about her pregnancy and labour, she began to open up about her greatest dilemma at the time – her eldest child, 10-year-old son Moja, the breadwinner of her family, was arrested by police six months before and detained at the Sibuga Immigration Detention Centre in Sandakan.
Her cheerful smile vanished in seconds when she started talking about her young son.
“About five months ago, one night, there was a police operation at the wood factory, where my son worked. I was nearby, and when I heard that there was an operation, I quickly ran toward the factory.
“I was either going to take my son to escape the place, or to surrender myself to police. Because either way, I would be with my son.
“But my friend stopped me and asked me to think about my unborn baby and my three other younger children at home. I was already nine months pregnant at the time.
“Police grabbed Moja into the police truck right before my eyes. I could only cry while my friend held me and took me away.
“They arrested my son, and my son is now all alone at the detention depot without any relatives or guardians taking care of his needs. What is worse is that they are going to send him to the Philippines; he has never gone to the Philippines. What is he going to do there all alone? How is he supposed to survive?” she asked.
Dina said Moja was unlike other children; he had the awareness to work hard for his family from a very young age.
“He never had toys and had never spent his own hard-earned money on himself, even for food. He would give all his daily earnings to me to put food on the table. When he was not working, he would take care of his younger siblings,” Dina said.
‘All alone in a foreign country’
Moja was arrested after about three months working at the nearby wood factory, where he earned about RM15 to RM20 a day. He had to work because Dina was let go from the factory when her pregnancy began to show.
After her son’s arrest, Dina depended on public donations to survive, but she resumed working after her baby turned six months.
“I have a plan. When my son is deported to the Philippines in Zamboanga, I will also go to Zamboanga to meet him there. Hopefully, my baby has stopped breastfeeding then.
“I honestly cannot imagine life without him. Imagine the guilt that I have to endure with just the thought of him being all alone in a foreign country,” Dina said.
Dina, a Tausug from the southern Philippines, came to Sabah for work some 20 years ago.
She then married a Filipino contract worker who had a legal work permit, but all her children’s births were not registered.
“I don’t have any documents (self-identification or travel pass), so I cannot go to the registration department to register my children’s births, or I might get arrested there. They are also not entitled to citizenship because I am not a local,” she said.
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Migrant workers are prohibited by law from having children in Sabah.
Dina claimed that her husband had gone missing about six months ago, which was also why Moja had to start working. But she was not worried for her husband, saying: “Maybe he had found a new wife in the Philippines.”
However, the writer was unable to contact Dina after the interview as she had moved.
Decades-old issues get more complicated with time
In December 2020, then-minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed confirmed that there were 1.09 million non-citizens in Sabah.
Based on the figures, one in every three people were migrants in Sabah’s estimated population of nearly 4 million.
There are three types of migrants in Sabah: those with valid permits, those with undocumented status, and those under the purview of the state’s foreigner management committee.
Those with valid status include non-citizens with permanent resident status, visitors, expatriates, migrant workers, and IMM13 pass-holders.
Those considered irregular are migrants who do not have self-identification documents, passports, or permits.
Those whose status comes under the management of the foreigner management committee include those with temporary resident status, refugee children without IMM13, those having valid non-immigration-related documents, children born from marriages with irregular migrants, and the Pa’lauh seafaring nomads.
Right now, the immediate approach the government is taking to solve the problem of undocumented migrants is to deport them back to their countries of origin. Most of them are from Indonesia and the Philippines.
But the long-term approach is taking longer than it should because the problem is not as simple as it is, and Moja’s case is a perfect example.
Moja was born in Sabah but his very presence in Sabah is illegal. Thus, the young boy is to be sent to the Philippines, where he does not know anyone and does not speak the language.
If this is not right, then what should the government do with children like Moja? There could be hundreds of thousands of them in Sabah.
While there are certain parties who have suggested that people like Moja be given the chance to work legally in Sabah, there are those who cry foul that undocumented migrants get to stay in the state despite unlawfully trespassing and entering it in the first place.
They claim that not only do irregular migrants build squatter houses and tarnish the state’s image, but they also steal electricity and water supply from local residents and are often linked to serious crimes such as robbery and drug abuse.
Sabah gathers data to tackle long-standing issue
The Sabah government has promised to come up with a plan to tackle the state’s long-standing migrant problems, but first, it must get the figures.
It is now actively carrying out a digital data registration exercise to tackle the matter, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
So far, approximately half of the 14,855 migrants registered under Sabah’s digital registration pilot programme were found to be undocumented, said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Jeffrey Kitingan.
“From the pilot project in Sawit Kinabalu, we registered 14,855 migrants. Almost all of the migrant workers had valid documents, but most of their dependents did not,” said Kitingan.
It is the same issue as faced by Dina – husbands who have working permits, but not their dependents.
These children who are not entitled to citizenship do not have access to public education or healthcare, and can only rely on jobs that pay daily as well as those offered by non-governmental organisations that have been helping them on humanitarian grounds.
For these children, the best-case scenario for their future in Sabah is that they would learn basic skills and get employed; earn an honest income, though illegally; and lead a quiet and simple life for the rest of their time in the state – provided the government does not deport them. – The Vibes, June 13, 2023
