RURAL folk will be on the losing end of the Home Ministry’s decision to stop the late registration of births at all state National Registration Department (NRD) offices, said Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii.

Appealing to Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to give special consideration to children born in rural areas, Yii said their parents could ill-afford to travel all the way to the NRD headquarters in Putrajaya to register their births.

“I request the ministry to give special consideration to all legitimate cases and not just have a blanket policy that may not be so relevant in some areas. 

“There are many cases of late birth registrations (which have) legitimate reasons, especially for those living in the interior and rural areas who may find it difficult to travel to the bigger towns.

“In many of such cases, rural folk can’t even afford to travel to the nearest town to register their child born in the interior, which may come up to many hundreds of ringgit,” Yii said in a statement today.

The DAP lawmaker was responding to Muhyiddin’s announcement yesterday on the move, which is part of other measures taken to curb fraud in the NRD following a recent crackdown on the sale of identification documents to Chinese nationals.

Twenty people, including a state NRD assistant director, were arrested on August 19 for their roles as agents, middlemen, sponsors and holders of fake birth certificates, MyKad and passports.

They are under remand for 28 days and are being investigated under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma).

The syndicate charged foreigners seeking citizenship between RM100,000 and RM600,000 for the documents.

Yii said some rural dwellers in Sarawak’s interior spend up to 15 hours just to make a one-way trip to the nearest NRD office.

Among the Orang Asal, many are unaware that they are required by law to register their children’s births as they practised their customary laws governing marriages and births, he said.

The good intentions behind the Home Ministry’s move, if not properly implemented, could worsen the case of stateless children, he said. 

“It may even exacerbate the current situation and more and more of our children will be deprived of their right to education, healthcare and more importantly, the right to a proper identity in their own country of birth.”

He acknowledged that the NRD and some groups facilitate mobile registrations in some villages but many more are unreachable because of the difficulty of travelling into the interior.

“Many of these villages are not even connected by roads, thus many will fall in between the cracks. Due to the new policy, they will then need to travel further to Putrajaya and that will deter them from registering their child, increasing the cases of stateless children in our country.”

He urged the ministry to make exceptions for children born in Sabah and Sarawak’s interior regions, as well as for Orang Asli in the peninsula who face the same problems. – September 23, 2019.