Sabah has no plans to issue IC, citizenship to illegal immigrants given COVID-19 vaccine in the state - CM

KOTA KINABALU, Sept 23 --The Sabah government has no plans to issue identity card (IC) or citizenship status to illegal immigrants (PTI) who received the COVID-19 vaccine in the state, the State Assembly was told today.

Chief Minister Datuk Hajiji Noor said this was to protect the rights and interests of the people of Sabah.

However, the state government will consider (issuing the identity card and citizenship) to the natives of the who still do not have identification documents," he added.

He said this in response to a supplementary question from Datuk Ewon Benedick (UPKO-Kedamaian) on the matter.

Recently, the media reported Deputy Home Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Mohamed Said as saying that the ministry would consider giving identity or citizenship cards to COVID-19 vaccine recipients in Sarawak and Sabah who do not have identification documents, including the natives, if they met the conditions.

Meanwhile, State Community Development and People's Welfare Minister Shahelmey Yahya, to another question from Ewon, said Sabah had received more than five million doses of COVID-19 vaccine since the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) was implemented.

Shahelmey, who is also the operations director of the State Immunisation Programme, said the vaccines comprised 3.38 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac (1.28 million doses), AstraZeneca (189,990 doses) and CanSino (180,000 doses).

We will be getting an additional 2.89 million doses (of the vaccine) of the vaccine supply in September, he said, adding that the amount is sufficient to cover the vaccination needs of the state’s population who have not received the vaccine.

He said as of last Tuesday (Sept 21), 59.4 per cent of the adult population have been fully vaccinated, while 33.8 per cent of the adolescents in the state have received the first dose of the vaccine.

On the vaccination programme for residents in the rural areas, he said, a total of 733 vaccination outreach programmes have been implemented and a total of 358,284 people have been vaccinated.

-- BERNAMA