PUTRAJAYA must have a clear and unambiguous mechanism in place for the stateless to apply for citizenship without any hassle, said Lawyers for Liberty.

LfL coordinator Zaid Malek said a standard operating procedure must be configured and the information must be accessible to prospective applicants.

“The Home Ministry must be clear on what kind of documentation is needed for the application.

“A proper checklist must be in place and the National Registration Department (NRD) must be tasked with giving the necessary advice and guidance to any stateless person who comes forward to make an application,” he said in a statement today.

He was referring to Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin’s announcement earlier this week that stateless Malaysians will be given a year to apply for citizenship.

“I will give a one-year period for all these people to register with the relevant documents to certify they are Malaysians,” said the home minister during his winding-up speech for his ministry’s budget debate in Dewan Rakyat on Monday.

Zaid said LfL had long called for serious and effective action by successive governments to resolve the problems of statelessness in Malaysia.

This is a longstanding problem, which has caused untold suffering to those denied citizenship, he said.

“Though details of this move have yet to be announced, we caution the minister to ensure that the mechanism for said applications must be clear and unambiguous.

“Most importantly, the documentations required must be reasonable. Stateless persons generally lack any proper and formal form of identification.”

He said a lack of documentation cannot be a bar to confirming the citizenship of the applicant.

According to a mapping project by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees Malaysia, there are 12,400 stateless people living in the peninsula in 2017. A total of 12,078 had applied for citizenship with the NRD while 2,359 have acquired citizenship.

The issue of statelessness is a legacy problem that has affected Indian Malaysians the most as many were born in the estates and had no means of registering themselves. – December 17, 2020.