TEARS flowed freely when a 65-year-old cancer-stricken Lawas woman, who was stripped of her MyKad last year purportedly because she was an Indonesian national, was told she would get her identity card back.

Describing the moment Lina Samuel was told she would be getting her MyKad back, Agnes Padan, the social activist who brought her plight to the media, said “she just broke down and cried”.

“All of us were in tears. I just can’t describe the feeling,” Padan said of the emotion she and Samuel’s two daughters, Ruran and Remina, went through.

Officials from the National Registration Department (NRD) visited Lina at Ruran’s rental house yesterday and asked her to drop by at their office.

Samuel, too weak to walk, had to be taken in a wheelchair to the Lawas NRD office to have her photograph and thumb prints taken as they begin the process to issue her a new MyKad.

Padan said the department today issued her with a temporary identification document.

The MyKad means a lot to Samuel as it would enable her to travel to Miri from landlocked Lawas for her cancer treatment.

Lawas is hemmed in to the north by Sabah and to the south by the Brunei district of Temburong.

To get to Miri, she has to either fly or take the road, but without the MyKad or any valid document, she could not take any one of them.

She could not check in without the MyKad and she needs the papers to cross Brunei by road.

Patients from Limbang or Lawas being transported to Miri via Brunei for medical treatment, need only show their MyKad.

Samuel was referred to the Miri hospital as the Lawas hospital has no doctors or facilities to treat cancer. She has been getting specialised treatment in Miri since February.

She had an appointment this Monday but that was thrown into disarray when she could not travel.

Padan, acting on behalf of the family, said before the latest development, she had contacted the doctor treating Samuel and was making arrangements for him to come to Lawas.

Padan has yet to inform the doctor on the latest development.

On Wednesday, the Sarawak Health Department assured the family from Long Sebangang that it will continue to treat Samuel despite her problems with her MyKad.

State health director Dr Ooi Choo Huck said the specialist clinic at Miri hospital will in fact honour the Monday follow-up treatment appointment.

Ooi, in response to Padan’s appeal for the department’s “to show some humanity” to a cancer patient in dire need of medical attention, said health services to her, and patients in a similar situation like her, would be provided “regardless of the patient’s nationality”. – April 14, 2023.