KOTA KINABALU: State Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan (pic) has reiterated calls to revive the Sabah Border Scouts, following yet another claim of a planned invasion from the Philippines.

       Kitingan said he has been suggesting the revival of the Sabah Border Scouts for years, and will continue to do so until it is revived.

       “Border scouts can help complement our security forces as they know the lands where they live best,” he said after an event with his party - Sabah STAR - and local communities in Penampang near here Friday (Dec 10).

       He said border scouts would be limited to land areas, as they do not have the capacity to move on sea or air.

       The Sabah border scouts, established in 1963, were mostly native Sabahans.

       It was a paramilitary unit trained by the British to repel the incursion of the Indonesian army during the Confrontation and the communist insurgency of that period.

       They were based in Keningau and their main tasks were to gather intelligence, mark enemy locations and open up helicopter landing sites deep in the Sabah border rainforest.

       They proved a success, especially as they had a good knowledge of the jungle’s porous terrain. The unit was disbanded in 1986.

       On the claims of invasion into Sabah, Kitingan said no one should take such information lightly and instead, strengthen existing security measures and assets to face any eventualities.

       He said such invasions had happened before (the Tanduo intrusion in 2013), and there was no guarantee that it would not recur.

       “We must be prepared,” he said, adding there was already a threat within the community with a huge population of nationals from the neighbouring country already made citizens over the past decades.

       He said these people were trying to infiltrate the population here, and they have become citizens because the previous governments had allowed illegal immigrants to have Malaysian identification documents.

       On Thursday (Dec 9), the South China Morning Post reported about a secret meeting among 19 mayors in Sulu to discuss the recruitment of 600 armed militia as plans to set up the "Royal Sulu Army” to invade Sabah.

       The meeting was allegedly held with a senior political figure in Sulu who ordered each mayor to carry out the recruitment.

       According to the report, which quoted a regional security official, there had been spies sent to check on coastal towns, although none had been infiltrated yet.

       Malaysian security forces have, however, dispelled these claims.