KUCHING, Aug 2: DAP Pending Assemblywoman Violet Yong opines that it is a wise decision by the Ministry of Home Affairs to dissolve the Sarawak Special Committee on Citizenship (SCC) headed by Sarawak’s Minister of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah for its underperformance in resolving the stateless and Malaysian Citizenship issues effectively.
She said since the establishment of the SCC in 2016, out of 723 applications for Malaysian Citizenship received over the past 3 years, only 120 applications had been approved and this itself has clearly shown the inefficiency of the SCC in tackling the issue.
“For the past decades under the Barisan Nasional (BN) government, the stateless and citizenship issues remain as big problems in Sarawak and unfortunately the then BN did not give due attention and put in effort to resolve it.
“The so called SCC also did not give any ‘special passage and approval’ for those applications submitted through the committee,” said Yong in a press statement today.
She revealed that she had personally submitted a few citizenship applications to SCC in November, 2016 hoping for positive results, but year in year out, nothing concrete forthcoming.
“If SCC is indeed well-functioned in handling the stateless and citizenship issues, why none of the cases I submitted to SCC got approved during her tenure as SCC chairperson?” Yong asked.
She said, the issue related to nationality and citizenship is within the power of the Federal Government enshrined under the Federal Constitution. Therefore, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government pays great attention to this issue faced by the state of Sarawak.
Meanwhile, she expressed delight to see the recent approval of 31 successful applicants following the active follow-up with the Ministry of Home Affairs by the PH MPs and Sarawak’s elected representatives, which resulted in the Home Ministry’s attention to this issue on nationality and citizenship.
She believed more approvals would be forthcoming in near future.
Yong called upon the member of the public to approach any of PH MPs and Sarawak’s elected representatives for assistance in the event they encounter problems on their applications relating to Mykad and citizenship related matters.
She was confident that the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Registration Department (JPN) which are under the PH Federal government will perform better and get more efficient in resolving the issues on stateless children and citizenship as compared to the past ruling BN government. — DayakDaily
