KUCHING: Sarawak National Registration Department (NRD) will assist the state government in the distribution of Bantuan Ibu Bersalin (BIB) forms beginning next month.
The forms will be available at all 52 NRD branches throughout the state.
Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah said Sarawak NRD’s participation would be able to assist the ministry to maximise efforts in ensuring that all eligible Sarawakian mothers could benefit from the assistance.
“Sarawak NRD’s initial role in assisting the ministry in the distribution of Endowment Fund Sarawak (EFS) forms was seen very effective whereby the forms are made known to the parents when they go to register their child’s birth.
“This is the second year of collaborating with NRD on the distribution of EFS forms. As of Sept 30, 17,901 out of 21,924 Sarawakian babies or 82 percent had registered for EFS.
“Meanwhile, BIB implementation only started this year and we have tried various ways to promote the incentive but the number of applications was not as good as EFS.
“That is why we decided to add another type of avenue which is at every NRD branches whereby those taking the EFS forms can also take BIB forms together before submitting them back to the NRD,” she elaborated.
She revealed that as of Sept 30, 11,459 out of 22,183 eligible mothers had applied for the BIB.
“We hope that with this close cooperation with NRD, we will have better results as we want mothers and families in general to benefit from the incentives introduced by the state government to ease their burden,” she added.
