KUCHING: 535 applications for citizenship under Article 15A of the Federal Constitution have been received since 2016 until yesterday.
Minister of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development, Dato Sri Hajah Fatimah Abdullah, said out of 240 applications for citizenship received from 2016 to 2017, 95 applicants had already received their letters of approval.
“The others are still waiting for approval by the Home Ministry,” she disclosed at a press conference after the meeting of the Special Committee on the Status of Citizenship Application under Article 15A of the Federal Constitution at Bangunan Masja, Petra Jaya here yesterday.
Fatimah also disclosed that 118 applications were deliberated by the Special Committee at yesterday’s meeting.
Of the 118 applicants, 68 were male and 50 were female. Six applicants were aged 18-21 years old, 25 were aged 13-17, 51 were aged 7-12 years old and 36 were aged 0-6 years old.
Among the reasons for the applications were that the births happened before marriages (64 persons), adopted children (28), children born outside marriage and the parents are still unmarried (22) while four were under guardian rights.
In most of the cases (73), the mothers were Indonesian citizens. Fatimah said 79 applications were submitted for the first time, 30 for the second time, seven for the third time, one for the fourth time and one for the fifth time.
Fatimah said her Ministry was really concerned about the future of stateless children in Sarawak and the Meeting of the Special Committee on the Status of Citizenship under Article 15A was the best platform to assess the applications for citizenship received by the National Registration Department Sarawak before being brought up to the highest level.
Fatimah said children who had obtained Malaysian citizenship could directly enjoy facilities as well as subsidies provided by the Malaysian government such as education assistance, medical aid, self identification documents, etc.
She added that since 2015 till 31 August this year, PN Sarawak’s Outreach Team had carried out 196 operations in 27 Parliamentary Constituencies and 68 State Constituencies in Sarawak.
She said of the 7,588 applications received, 4,805 were approved, 2,468 rejected while 315 were being processed.
Fatimah said this year, JPN Sarawak had also carried out operations to tackle issues related to citizenship of schoolchildren.
Fatimah said each application for citizenship under Article 15A would be notified by the Home Ministry directly to the applicants through post.
