Woah, this is pretty alarming!
In a report by the Borneo Post, it was recently discovered that foreigners in Sarawak have been using a number of unscrupulous tactics in efforts to gain Malaysian citizenship and other identification documents.
The National Registration Department (NRD)’s special task force reportedly uncovered these tactics during its mobile registration operations. NRD Sarawak’s director Jasni Jublis stated at a press conference,
“We also found out another attempt to obtain citizenship by becoming adopted children of local people.”
“They will come over to the locations when they learn about our mobile registration operations and try to insert the names of their family members as adopted children.”
Source: FMT
“There are also those who have applied numerous times using different names from their original name so as to get the citizenship.”
These methods are however typically uncovered during interviews with applicants in the presence of community leaders or village chiefs who discovered they weren’t locals.
The NRD special taskforce has reportedly carried out 158 operations in Sarawak up until 28th November this year, where 6,784 applications for late registration of births were submitted. Out of these applications, 4,586 were approved while a surprising 2,198 were rejected. Many of these rejected applicants were either found to be non-citizens, adopted, or were not born in Sarawak.
Source: MMO
“The major problem for rejected applications is in Baram area,” the NRD director stated.
The Minister of Welfare, Community, Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah, who was also in attendance at the press conference, stated that the NRD special task force conducted mobile registration programmes in both rural and remote areas with help from elected representatives.
Dato Sri Fatimah stated,
“Our role and function are to filter and investigate the applications to ensure they are genuine and all forms are properly completed. The status of the applicants can be verified by community leaders (‘Tuai Rumah’ and ‘Penghulu‘) who are familiar with and know their backgrounds.”
Well, it’s good to know the NRD is doing their best to sniff out these fishy applications!
Also read: M’sian Indian with Chinese Name Has MyKad Seized and Stripped of Citizenship
