SARAWAK Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Fatimah Abdullah is exasperated at the secretive nature of the Home Ministry’s decision-making process on the matter of approving or rejecting the citizenship applications of stateless children.

“We don’t know (anything). They don’t tell us. It’s all ‘sulit’ (confidential),” said Fatimah, after chairing a meeting of the special committee on Sarawak’s stateless children, in Kuching, today.

The committee vets the applications for citizenship before forwarding them to the Home Minister for a decision.

Fatimah had earlier said she was aware that approval was granted for 95 of the 241 applications received in 2016 and 2017, and had not been informed of the status of the rest.

She said that while it is the sole prerogative of the home minister to reject or approve applications for citizenship, she said “it would be nice to know”  more about the decision-making process.

“If (an application is delayed or rejected)  due to an error in filling in the forms or to incomplete documents, it would be nice to know so we could give the right advice to expedite the application process.

“Even educated people make mistakes filling in the forms. Filling forms can also be an awesome task sometimes.”

Fatimah said she made the request with the former home minister and will follow up with the current Home Hinister Muhyiddin Yassin when she meets him on February 22.

Most of the stateless children are products of Sarawak men’s liaisons with foreigners, mainly Indonesian and Chinese women. – January 28, 2019.