Abdullah (right) speaking at the Special Meeting on Citizenship at Baitulmakmur in Petra Jaya, Kuching.
KUCHING: The state National Registration Department (NRD) will be focusing its task force on registering students who have yet to have their birth certificate in 2018. Minister of Welfare, Community Well-Being, Women, Family and Childhood Development, Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah said that NRD will be collaborating with the state Education Department to tackle this matter.
“The task force will be deployed to primary and secondary schools, particularly in the rural areas to identify students who have yet to have their birth certificates. “The deployment will begin January next year where we will also be collaborating with the state Health Department through various approaches.
“At the same time, we will also be tackling Item 19 (Perkara 19),” said the minister during the Special Meeting on Citizenship held at Baitulmakmur here yesterday. Item 19 consists of those above the age of 21 years old as opposed to Item 15A which consists of those below the age of 21 years old. Fatimah disclosed that the task force would also focus on registering the Penans as they are a nomadic community. “NRD Sarawak and my ministry are looking very seriously into tackling this issue. Hence, up to 28 November, 2017, the task force through 158 operations, had received a total of 6,784 applications. “4,586 of them were approved while the remainder (2,198) were rejected and recorded.
“The common factor of rejecting an application is the biological child to the alleged parents was not born in Sarawak or is not a Malaysian. “We have also identified that some had made multiple applications by using different names.
That is why those applications that were rejected were recorded. “Baram happened to be the place where this strange incidents occurred. We have also identified foreigners who would take their chance during this programme to make an application in hopes that the NRD would be careless and approve their application,” added Fatimah. She pointed out that on 30 November, 2017, the state NRD had successfully handed over the citizenships to 46 applicants out of 224 applicants under Item 15A.
