Consulate registering marriages, births of Indonesians
TAWAU: There are around 110,000 Indonesian citizens in Tawau, according to data on the submission and extension of Indonesian passports here in 2018.
Many of these Indonesians are married to their country citizens in Sabah and have not registered or formalized their marriages and that of their children to the authorities in Malaysia and in Indonesia. This will result in the vulnerability of the women and the citizenship rights of the children of the marriage.
To overcome this, the Republic of Indonesia Consulate Tawau (KRI) for the second time cooperated with the Directorate General of Population and Civil Registration, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, along with religious leaders from Tawau and Nunukan to hold Christian and Catholic Marriage Deed Recording and Publishing Activities and Consulate Birth Certificates RI Tawau.
Indonesian Consulate Tawau head Sulistijo Djati Ismojo yesterday said the activity was an effort of the Indonesian Consulate in Tawau to provide protection in the form of legal certainty for Indonesian citizens or migrant workers in the Tawau KRI area who were Christians, but the marriage had not been registered.
To carry out the recording process at the Indonesian Ministry of Home Affairs database, the Directorate General of Population and Civil Registration, the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia, has specifically assigned a team from Jakarta to Tawau.
Meanwhile, to verify the validity of Indonesian citizens’ marriages, KRI Tawau worked with Christian religious leaders from Tawau and Nunukan.
Vara Dwikhandini, executive director of the KRI Tawau KRI function, as chairperson of the organizing committee for the Registration and Issuance of Marriage Certificates and Birth Certificates of KRI Tawau, reported that 200 Indonesian couples have registered for marriage certificates and more than 500 children have registered for their birth certificates.
He explained that as stipulated in Law No. 1 of 1974 concerning marriages, although a legal marriage is carried out according to religion and beliefs, in the eyes of the country, the marriage is considered invalid if it has not been recorded by the Office of Religious Affairs or the Civil Registry Office.