Abang Johari: Sarawak studying e-resident programme to facilitate short-term stay of foreign professionals

• Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg said the state government would work together with the industries in Sarawak as well as the embassies or high commissions to screen the e-resident applications before approving them.

KUCHING (Aug 4): The Sarawak government plans to introduce an e-resident programme to facilitate the entry of professionals and specialists from around the world into the state.

Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg (pictured) said that he had sent a team to study the mechanism and implementation of a similar programme in Estonia, a country that Sarawak could emulate as a model for this initiative.

“Once I have the model [for implementation], I will bring it to the state assembly to get approval for e-resident,” he told reporters after attending the launch of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak’s Tun Abang Haji Openg Data Centre (TAHODC) at Kota Samarahan on Friday (Aug 4).

He said the state government would work together with the industries in Sarawak as well as the embassies or high commissions to screen the e-resident applications before approving them.

“It must be G2G (government to government). We are going to use the data provided by the government of the applicant’s country before we issue e-resident,” he said.

Abang Johari said the status of e-resident holders would be similar to those who are permanent residents of the state, where they could enter and leave Sarawak without immigration hassle.

He said that while e-resident would be something new in Malaysia, this has already been implemented by a number of countries due to companies' global expansion around the world.

“Strategic personnel [of the companies] who have to come often [and stay for a short period] can do so without much [immigration] hassle,” he added.

On the establishment of the Unimas data centre, he said this was a right move towards producing more data specialists in Sarawak as it progresses further in an endeavour to digitalise its domestic economy.

“A lot of processes are technologically-based, so we need our university to migrate towards new technology, discipline and processes that will produce graduate who match the needs [of the industries],” he added.

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