SUPP Youth Central puzzled by MyKid-less girl not allowed to fly

SIBU: The case of a 12-year- old girl forbidden to take a flight back to Sarawak for not being able to produce her MyKid is puzzling.

In a press statement received here yesterday, Sarawak United People’s Party ( SUPP) Central Youth chief Michael Tiang said he could not understand why one was allowed to fly to any state in Peninsular Malaysia with a police report lodged for loss of identity card, but not to Sarawak.

“The girl stranded at klia2 is a Sarawak citizen,” he said, adding that he respected Malaysia Airport Holdings Berhad’s ( MAHB) standard operating procedures for airport security, but criticized the double standard practised.

Tiang, who is also a political secretary to the chief minister, said under the Immigration Act 1957/63, it is an absolute right for a Sarawakian to enter Sarawak.

“All the girl wanted was to go home to Sarawak on a domestic flight, not an international one, yet she was denied by the airport security to do so.”

He applauded the director of Immigration Sarawak Ken Leben for giving permission to the girl to enter Sarawak with just an original copy of the police report lodged for loss of her MyKid.

Tiang said he also found it shocking that MAHB had offered no alternative to the poor girl, who was thus stranded at klia2 for nine hours.

He believed the recent incident was not the first of its kind encountered by the airport authority.

He, therefore, suggested to M AH B to review their requirements on flying documents in respect of domestic flights.

He also urged the company to design special procedures to accommodate and assist senior citizens, the handicapped and children who experience issues with their flying documents

It was reported that the girl and her father, Wan Fadillah Wan Ahmad, were scheduled to leave on an AirAsia flight bound for Kuching at 1.35pm on Dec 31.

After realising that his daughter’s identification card was missing, he reported the loss of the MyKid to the police at klia2.

He claimed that the aviation security officers refused to let his daughter board the plane despite being shown a snapshot of her passport and birth certificate on his mobile phone.

Responding to the news, MAHB in a statement defended its decision to bar the child from boarding a flight so as not to compromise on safety protocols at its airport.

It said it was in line with the National Civil Aviation Security Programme.