KUCHING, June 16 — Parti Bumi Kenyalang (PBK) president Voon Lee Shan today urged Putrajaya and Sabah governments not to waste public funds and time by deploying a team to the British National Archives in London to search for documents related to the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).

He said there is no point for them to duplicate the work already done by the Sarawak government some six years ago.

“What the federal and Sabah governments should do is to obtain information gathered by the Sarawak government that had spent public money and Sarawak government should not keep all things as secrets of what had been discovered in London,” Voon said in a press statement.

He was responding to a press report that a team, to be led by Minister in Prime Minister's Department for Sabah and Sarawak Affairs Datuk Seri Maximus Ongkili and comprise legal experts, researchers and officials from both the federal and Sabah governments, will depart for London on June 19.

Voon said a week-long trip to London to do research and study references related to the rights of Sabah under MA63 is too short to do any good research as the documents are voluminous.

He said the Sabah and federal governments could also refer to the work of Professors AJ Stockwell and Michael Leigh who had spent years for their research about MA63 and the formation of Malaysia.

“From my research concerning MA63 and the formation of Malaysia, many documents could have been lost or destroyed and persons involved dead by now,” he said.

Ongkili had two days ago said in Kota Kinabalu that preliminary research showed over 300 documents referring to Sabah’s rights and matters related to the MA63 are at the National Archives in London.

The team members include Sabah Attorney-General Datuk Nor Asiah Mohd Yusof and Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia who is the Sabah envoy to Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillipines-East Asean Growth Area.

Nearly 60 years after the formation of Malaysia, Sabah is still negotiating with the federal government to reinstate its allowances laid out under the MA63.

Among Sabah's top concerns are revenue rights and oil-and-gas royalties.