Special committee must work harder to find stateless in S’wak: Saifuddin

MIRI – The special joint committee on citizenship approval needs to be more aggressive in finding those in rural Sarawak who are without birth certificates and identity cards, Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said.

He said more mobile units must also be deployed into the state’s interior areas, where there are as many as 6,000 longhouses and remote villages scattered throughout without proper road access.

“The special federal-state committee on this citizenship issue in Sarawak must be more thorough in their coverage in the rural region,” he said at an event at Wisma Bapa Malaysia in Kuching today.

“We cannot wait for stateless persons to come to the National Registration Department offices. We must go to them and seek them out to help them,” he added, also urging the joint committee to coordinate with community groups.

Saifuddin said his ministry had, to date, received 946 applications for citizenship from stateless persons in Sarawak.

He said 60 of these had been approved recently. – The Vibes, July 24, 2023