Citizenship application panel to be set up

PUTRAJAYA: A special committee headed by the Home Ministry and Human Resources Ministry will be set up to look into resolving drawn out citizenship applications, says Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (pic).

The Home Minister said he would chair the committee to look into resolving around 200,000 cases of people waiting for citizenship despite living in Malaysia for decades or those having born in the country.

“Due to some minor reasons like incomplete documentation, these people have not been able to get their blue IC.

“I believe that the Pakatan Harapan government can solve this problem quickly as it is one of the pledges in our election manifesto,” he said after visiting the National Registration Department headquarters here yesterday.

Muhyiddin said that along with the formation of the committee, other topics discussed during his visit included the upgrading of old equipment in the department to further speed up processes like printing new MyKad.

“We are also studying ways to ease logistics issues faced by people living in rural areas in Sabah and Sarawak to register child births and marriages.

“Delays in registering, due to them living in remote areas, can lead to problems like the citizenship issue,” he said.

He said one of the ways to address this was to allow village heads to do the registration for the parents.

On another matter, Muhyiddin said a study would be done to look into raising the legal marriage age for girls from 16 to 18, as suggested by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

“We will get feedback from all relevant parties.

“If this is acceptable to the people and something that we feel is good, then we will implement it,” he said.