Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem (seated, right) on Saturday made the announcement that the state’s indigenous groups like the Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu would no longer be referred to as 'others' in the column for race in official government forms..

KOTA KINABALU, Jan 21 — The Sabah government decided today to follow in the footsteps of its Borneo neighbour Sarawak and agreed to remove the “lain-lain” (other) option in the race column on government documents.

State secretary Tan Sri Sukarti Wakiman said that the state Cabinet deliberated the matter in its meeting today and decided that the column should now be replaced with a blank space to allow applicants to identify their respective ethnicities.

“The state government will come up with a list of ethnic races in Sabah to be handed to the National Registration Department to reference in processing birth registration applications and Malaysian identity cards for those from Sabah,” said Sukarti.

The “lain-lain” column in the race category has been a point of contention among Borneo’s native races who are mostly from ethnic tribes, with Sabah itself having over 30 ethnic races.

The racial make-up of the east Malaysian state is vastly different from that of states in the Malaysian peninsula, which is typically categorised under Malay, Chinese and Indian and the contentious “lain-lain”.

Several Barisan Nasional and opposition lawmakers as well as local non-governmental organisations have called for Sabah government to follow in the footsteps of Sarawak to scrap the “lain-lain” race column from official government forms with immediate effect.

It was reported that Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem on Saturday made the announcement that the state’s indigenous groups like the Iban, Bidayuh and Orang Ulu would no longer be referred to as “others” in the column for race in official government forms.

Both states will now have the option to state their actual ethnicity.