Kota Kinabalu: KOTA Kinabalu City Hall senior assistance enforcement officer in charge of demolition of squatter areas and special tasks unit, Mohd Amir Izzat Romeo bin Abdullah, said they conduct demolition exercises on squatter homes and structures built without permission on State land in the city.They monitor squatter areas on private lands but do not monitor and check on gazetted settlements for refugees.
He said there is no flooding of illegals in squatter areas here but some can be seen in construction sites that are currently being developed like in Menggatal area.
Compared to the 500,000 population here, Amir said the illegals comprised small percentage.
To a question by Conducting Officer Jamil Aripin, Amir said they would determine the citizenship status of the occupants in the squatter areas based on the documents shown by them.
"The occupants showed many kinds of personal identification documents to us during census exercise.
"Among the documents I have encountered are the Bunga Raya ICs, MyKads, IMM13 cards, passports, birth certificates, MyPR and a letter from Chief Minister Department (CMD)," he said.
Amir said it was very rare for the occupants to have no documents.
As of end last year, he said 31 locations here have been identified as having squatter houses like Likas, Sembulan, Pulau Gaya, Inanam, Luyang and Tanjung Aru, among others.
"We do issue at least a seven-day notice to the squatters to leave the area.
When there are appeals, then we would consider postponing the demolition exercise as several of these squatter areas are in the process to be gazetted as village reserves or the occupants are planning to apply for the same purpose," Amir said.
However, the postponing does not necessarily mean that the demolition exercise to be stopped.
On implications to Sabah, he admitted that squatter areas do pose negative impact like being the eyesore and because the children in the squatter areas do not go to school they can be seen engaging in gambling.
In addition, water and electricity thefts are rampant as well as drug trafficking.
On demolition of illegal structures and squatter houses, Amir said a total of 253 structures had been torn down as of May this year compared to 324 structures demolished in 2012.
