PKR’s citizenship programme coordinator A Kumaresan said while the federal government had said it would focus on converting red identity card holders or permanent residents to citizens, cases involving stateless children should be made a priority.
The Batu Uban assemblyman said thousands of stateless children had been deprived of free healthcare and a chance to enrol in schools due to delays stemming from bureaucracy in the NRD.
Kumaresan said there was no need to have another task force to look into the stateless people issue as it only required a change in policy at the NRD to allow officers to register them and give them citizenship.
He said the practice of setting up a task force outside of the NRD could sometimes cause problems as there was a disconnect.
Kumaresan said in order to resolve this, all cases should be handled solely by the NRD without the involvement of others.
“We do not need another task force. Having a task force is a thing of the past and was proven ineffective during the Barisan Nasional era.
“Why don’t we allow stateless people, especially children, to just head to the respective NRD offices to register and take it from there?” he told FMT.
Kumaresan, who has been helping stateless people for the past 10 years, said a source at the NRD told him that the department was ready to process applications from stateless people but had yet to “receive orders from the minister in charge”.
He said the government should expedite the order as many children were being deprived of assistance and education.
Kumaresan said between 2012 and January 2017, there were 15,394 children born to at least one Malaysian parent who were denied citizenship and remained stateless.
He said the Parliament was once told that there were an estimated 300,000 stateless children in the country.
He said the old practice of giving red ICs or citizenship to those who were already over the age of 70 should be given low priority with importance given to youngsters who were unable to pursue an education or get a job.
“The bureaucracy has caused a lot of trouble for people without citizenship for many decades. We must help these people,” he said.
Pakatan Harapan promised to resolve the statelessness issue in Malaysia as part of its election manifesto.
The problem of stateless people is not limited to the peninsula as Sabah, too, has a large number of people without citizenship.
A coalition of NGOs in Sabah last month claimed there were “at least 800,000 stateless people” in the state.
Last November, NGO Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas Malaysia said Indians were the highest affected in the peninsula with 12,392 stateless individuals recorded between 2014 and 2017.
It said of the number, only 2,225 had acquired citizenship.
Out of the 12,392 stateless, 4,522 were children up to the age of 17 years, 3,227 were adults aged 18 to 59, and 4,643 were seniors aged 60 and above.
It said of the seniors, 40% were born in Malaysia while the other 60% had arrived in the country before independence in 1957.