KUCHING: The Ministry of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Child Development is working on a courtesy call to the Home Ministry.
Its Minister, Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah said that the ministry was currently awaiting for the appropriate date set by the Home Ministry.
She explained that the courtesy call on Home Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was related to the issue of citizenship under Article 15A involving children under the age of 21.
“We want children under the age of 21 who still have no citizenship status to be given special consideration, to facilitate them to go to school and receive schooling assistance.
“In addition to access to government assistance such as pre-school assistance, free textbooks, welfare assistance, medical facilities in hospitals and government clinics,” she said during a press conference after chairing the Special Committee on Citizenship under Article 15A No. 5/2018 here yesterday.
Fatimah revealed that from January to October this year (except from May to August), a total of 321 applications for the Malaysian citizenship were submitted to the Home Ministry.
However, she added that the results of the applications have yet to be made known to her ministry.
“Of the 321 applications, there were the second, third and fourth applications because the previous applications were rejected for some reason.
“In line with that, we have asked applicants to reapply by completing all necessary information as the party confirmed that the application is from Home Ministry,” said Fatimah.
She also said that the application of citizenship status in the past took a period of four to five years, but with a special committee, the application process can be accelerated and simplified.
Earlier, Fatimah disclosed that for the applications which were tabled from November 2016 to August 2017, 95 out of 190 were approved.
The State-level Special Committee on Citizenship Status Under Article 15A have up-to-date tabled and discussed 561 applications since November 2016.
