KUCHING: The Home Ministry and government officers need to go out all to assist stateless persons to ensure their citizenship applications do not go unanswered or rejected without valid reasons.
Selangau member of Parliament (MP) Baru Bian said not every stateless person is able to have his or her case highlighted by the media and many cannot afford to take their cases to court.
He said some of the people in remote villages in Sarawak ended up as stateless people as it was too difficult and challenging for their parents to go to the nearest towns to register their birth.
"Some were even unaware of the need to do so," he said in a statement today.
Baru, who is also the Ba'kelalan assemblyman, claimed he has been assisting many stateless people to apply for citizenship but the response has been slow.
He said without the citizenship status and an identity card, stateless people often faced various hardships, including being refused a full education, getting a job, bank account, driving license as well as buying a car or property, among others.
Thus, he welcomed the recent decision of the Court of Appeal, which ruled that Wong Kueng Hui, 27, who was born in Sabah to a Sarawakian father and a mother believed to be from Indonesia, was entitled to Malaysian citizenship.
Wong's Malaysian father died when he was 10 years old, while his non-Malaysian mother died when he was 17. Wong had applied twice under Article 15A of the FC to be recognised as a Malaysian, but both applications were rejected.
Wong then filed a lawsuit through a judicial review on June 20, 2019, to seek several court orders, including to be recognised as a Malaysian citizen.
Another case, which was highlighted in the media recently, involved Rohana Abdullah, who was abandoned when she was two-months-old at a kindergarten after her Indonesian mother returned to her country. The 22-year-old has been applying for citizenship since 2016 but has not received any response so far.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob has given his commitment to assist Rohana, after he found out about the difficulties she experienced, including being forced to drop out of school because she did not have identification documents, and had suffered anxiety due to the problems.
Baru said there were many cases of stateless people in the same quandary as Wong and Rohana in Sabah and Sarawak as well, thus, the Home Ministry must be more responsive to the plight of stateless people in Malaysia.
"I hope the government will review the way they assess applications for citizenships, and be more open to approving such applications," he added.