TUESDAY-8 JULY 2008- 4,928 IMMIGRANTS GRANTED M'SIAN CITIZENSHIP: MINISTER

4,928 immigrants granted M’sian citizenship: Minister

KOTA KINABALU:

The Federal Government granted citizenship to 4,928 immigrants comprising 3,186 from Indonesia and 1,742 from the Philippines from 2004 to May this year, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar disclosed in the Parliament. He said the Government still has no data and information on the actual number of illegal Filipino immigrants found in Sabah. His Ministry only has information and statistics on Filipinos who are categorised and registered as refugees, and they number 57,194, said Syed Hamid when replying to Datuk Eric Majimbun (BN-Sepanggar) during the question and answer session. Meanwhile, Minister of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industries Datuk Mustapa Mohamed told the House that the total quantity of subsidized diesel for fishermen in Sabah last year was 165,181,558 litres, a marked increase compared to 118,851,854 litres in 2006. He said the quantity of subsidized diesel given to fishermen nationwide was 1,099,000,723 litres last year compared to 989,727,418 litres in 2006. The Government introduced the subsidized diesel scheme for fishermen on January 1, 2006. Mustapha said last year, Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan recorded a total of 346,760 metric tons of fish landings from the sea, adrop compared to 353,465 metric tons in 2006, 365,053 metric tons (2005), 382,543 metric tons (2004), 362,901 metric tons (2003) and 354,585 metric tons in 2002. The national sea fish landings were 1,272,080 metric tons in 2002, 1,283,255 metric tons (2003), 1,331,647 metric tons (2004), 1,209,604 metric tons (2005), 1,379,771 metric tons (2006) and 1,421,702 metric tons last year. The fish landings in the country are divided into three regions, namely west coast, east coast and Sarawak-Sabah-Labuan, he said.