THE government is currently planning to issue its own refugee card, Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin said today.

According to Hamzah, Malaysia decides whether any particular refugee could remain the country and be given the card issued by the responsible Malaysian government agency.

“Suddenly, there are other agencies that are conducting registrations (and issuing cards) in our country,” he said in Putrajaya today.

Hamzah said in April 2020 that the government would not acknowledge Rohingyas as refugees of and classified them as illegal immigrants who held the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) card.

Malaysia, he said, was a non-signatory country to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, and therefore lacked a legal or administrative framework to manage the status and rights of refugees.

Currently, only the National Registration Department is qualified to register any individual to stay legally in Malaysia.

In other developments, he said the authorities are still looking for 61 Rohingya refugees who escaped from the Relau temporary immigration detention centre in Sungai Bakap, Penang.

He said the authorities believed they were hiding in Selayang, Selangor.

On April 20, 528 detainees escaped from the detention facility but more than 460 were later detained, while seven were killed while trying to cross the North-South Expressway at Kilometre 168. – Bernama, April 29, 2022.