THE Federal and Sarawak joint government committee, established last year to resolve cases of stateless Sarawak folk, will intensify its efforts to locate as many stateless individuals as possible in the deep interiors of Sarawak.

Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail stated that he had met with Sarawak Premier Abang Johari Openg in Kuching today to discuss the matter.

“We will accelerate efforts to locate and register rural folks living in the very remote parts of Sarawak who still lack personal documents such as birth certificates and identity cards.

“The joint committee will deploy teams to as many remote settlements as possible, including National Registration Department officers.

“They will process the applications of stateless individuals, interview them, and gather evidence of their birth locations during these visits.

“The state government is providing full logistical support.

“If helicopters are needed, the state government will supply them.

“With this increased effort and comprehensive logistical cooperation between the federal and Sarawak governments, I am confident we will see significant progress in the coming months in locating, identifying, and assisting more stateless Sarawak folk,” he told reporters today in Kuching.

Saifuddin said the state government had also compiled data on locations where many individuals still lack vital personal documents.

“The NRD offices in Sarawak also have data that we can utilise.

“With the serious approach that both the federal and Sarawak governments are taking, this issue of stateless Sarawakians will hopefully be resolved comprehensively very soon,” he added.

On 20 November last year, the special joint committee formed by the state and Federal Government to assist in registering stateless individuals in Sarawak came to Miri city to set up a mobile registration counter at the Miri Civic Centre.

Hundreds of rural stateless individuals travelled to the city each day, even from as far as the remote Baram settlements in interior Miri.

However, many were disappointed as the counter staff could only attend to a limited number of individuals daily.

On that day, Baram social activist Willie Kajan alerted The Vibes about the congestion at the counter.

Hundreds were seen crowding the hallway and spilling onto the roads.

Kajan had then urged the state and federal governments to make an urgent decision to extend the mobile counter services into December, as there were literally hundreds of stateless men, women, children, and elderly who remained unattended.

Many of these stateless individuals had come to Miri city and slept on the streets just to wait to be attended to by the mobile counter team, which included staff from the National Registration Department, the District Office, and the Resident Office.

The mobile counters at Dewan Suarah Miri operated from 20 to 30 November only.

Kajan mentioned that he knew many of these stateless individuals, who were from the deep Baram longhouses.

“They came in the hundreds every day.

“Many slept along the streets near Dewan Suarah just to queue up very early.

“It is clear that the mobile counter team was unprepared for such a large crowd of individuals without birth certificates and MyKads,” he said.

He called on the special joint committee on citizenship registration for stateless Sarawakians, formed by the Federal Government and Sarawak Government, to be more proactive in seeking out those in rural Sarawak who are without birth certificates and identity cards.

There are as many as 6,000 rural longhouses and remote scattered villages throughout Sarawak, a state as large as the whole of Peninsular Malaysia.

Many of them still do not have proper road links to the outside world.

Of Sarawak’s three million residents, about a million live in rural locations. – August 17, 2024.