Deadline next year
Minister gives special taskforce one year to clear ‘stateless’ student cases
KUCHING: The special taskforce set up by the state National Registration Department (NRD) in collaboration with the Education Department will focus on helping ‘stateless’ school- going children get identification documents next year.
In addition, the taskforce will also deal with new applications of stateless individuals above 21 years of age under Article 19 of the Federal Constitution.
Minister of Welfare, Community, Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah revealed this yesterday when clarifying that the special taskforce would be working more aggressively to eliminate the problem by next year before the expiry of the term of the taskforce.
“We a re very concerned about students with unknown citizenship status, especially in rural and remote areas because their future is at stake,” she told a press conference held together with NRD director Jasni Jubli at her office in Bangunan Baitulmakmur here.
“The taskforce will go down to the schools besides holding monthly meetings. In helping them, we want to solve as many cases as possible,” she said.
The Education Department, she added, will need to identify these children from primary to secondary schools and community leaders have been urged to bring up the cases to district offices.
“Thus, parents and guardians must come forward to help their children apply for citizenship once they have been identified,” she advised.
Noting that most of the stateless children had parents who themselves were without proper identification documents, Fatimah pointed out that their citizenship status must be resolved before their children could be legally recognised citizens of Malaysia.
“In this aspect, I really want to advise couples to be legally
We are very concerned about students with unknown citizenship status especially in rural and remote areas because their future is at stake. Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah Minister of Welfare, Community, Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development
married according to the state’s law and follow the procedures required by foreign embassies as well as getting their marriage registered in the state even if you have done it elsewhere,” she reminded.
She revealed that up until Nov 28 this year, the taskforce had carried out 158 operations throughout Sarawak during which 6,784 applications for late registration of births were received.
Out of that figure, 4 ,58 6 applications were approved while 2,198 were rejected for various reasons.
“We have seen many such cases whereby Sarawak-born children have no citizenship status because they are born outside marriage, meaning the marriage between a local and foreigner is not legal ly binding. In law, the citizenship of the child will follow the mother’s, unless the parents are legally married,” she elaborated.
“We have to be very very careful when going through all the applications, else will have serious impl icat ions. While we want to help them get their IDs, we must also make sure they are genuine,” she emphasised.
On developing an onl ine chi ldren adoption system, Fatimah assured that it will be done latest by March next year to enable all NRD offices in Sarawak to process and issue birth certificates for adopted children through the system within one day.
“A Standard Operating Procedure ( SOP) for child adoption has been done and it will be the guideline for child adoption to be used at all district offices,” she said.
“We have already put forward indicators to ensure NRD continue to achieve excellent performance next year with focus on IT management, customer management, optimising human resources, among others,” she added.