Home Ministry urged to expedite process for citizenship application

Fatimah speaking to the press after giving out ‘ang pow’ and hampers to welfare assistance recipients at Kuching Heng Hua Seng Ing Tong temple yesterday.

KUCHING (Jan 18): The Home Ministry has been urged to expedite the approval process for citizenship application under Section 15A of the Federal Constitution of stateless children in Sarawak.

Minister of Women, Children and Community Wellbeing Development Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah said a special committee was set up on Aug 15, 2016 to facilitate the citizenship applications for stateless children in the state.

“It must be understood that the special committee has no jurisdiction to approve the applications but to only facilitate the process in ensuring all the required documents are in order,” said Fatimah, who sits on the committee.

She added that stateless children whose application for citizenship had taken too long to be processed would face unnecessary difficulties in obtaining education, health services and even employment.

Fatimah added her ministry had also previously requested the Home Minister to provide special consideration to citizenship applications of abandoned babies as their biological parents’ whereabouts were unknown.

The minister also said the special committee’s role was to ensure no citizenship applications of stateless children in Sarawak were rejected due to incomplete documents, and to expedite the review process.

She disclosed that there were instances where citizenship application process was shortened from the usual five years or more to only one year.

“We hope that through our efforts in the special committee, citizenship applications that had been referred to the Home Minister will be addressed as soon as possible so that the stateless children could avoid all the unnecessary troubles in the future.”

She said this when giving out ‘ang pow’ and hampers to welfare assistance recipients at Kuching Heng Hua Seng Ing Tong temple, Jalan Central Timur here yesterday.

She said assisting stateless children in the state to obtain citizenship was also one of the pledges in the election manifesto of Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) state government.

Later, Fatimah’s office shared with the media that there were 723 citizenship applications under Section 15A of the Federal Constitution between 2016 and 2019, and another 246 applications in 2021.

From the total number of applications from 2016 until last year, 253 applications were approved.

Nonetheless, Fatimah said her ministry will submit a proper letter to both the Prime Minister and Home Minister stating the position of the state government in resolving the issue of stateless children in Sarawak soonest possible and for the approval process period to be reduced.

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