By Dominic Legeh
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah continues to top the list of poor states in the country because the federal government's allocation for each state is based on the number of Malaysian citizens in each state and not the actual population.
Former Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) vice-chairman, Simon Sipaun said the Malaysia Plan formula which was used by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) was not feasible for Sabah because it did not take into account the thousands of illegal immigrants.
He said nine years ago when Suhakam was under the chairmanship of Musa Hitam, they had a dialogue in Kuala Lumpur which involved the relevant ministers and the EPU.
“During the meeting, I asked (the EPU) how they allocated money to all the states when formulating the Malaysia Plan.
"In the case of Sabah, I said, there are many illegal immigrants in Sabah and supposing that we have half a million illegal immigrants in Sabah, do you take into account the total number of people in Sabah when you allocate the money or not,” he recalled.