GEORGE TOWN, March 15 — Penang Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P Ramasamy today blamed bureaucracy in the National Registration Department (NRD) for the difficulties he has faced in helping stateless Malaysians.
Ramasamy, who was appointed to head the Stateless People in Penang programme in February 2013, said he has been fighting a losing battle with what he described as a “racist organisation.”
“We are fighting a losing battle with the NRD and their bureaucracy because they just don't care about these people who are Malaysians but do not have an identity so they are stateless,” the DAP deputy secretary-general told a press conference at his office today.
“In the three years since the programme was started, we have helped a total 654 individuals to apply for their birth certificates, identity cards or citizenships but only 44 applications were successful, that's a less than 10 per cent success rate,” he said.
Of this, he said a total of 19 applications were rejected while the rest are still pending.
“There are so many stateless Malaysian cases, about 300,000 in whole of Malaysia and these people are given the run-around by the NRD,” he said.
He alleged that the NRD has not been helpful in assisting the applicants.
“I don't want to turn this into a racial issue but it seems NRD is more keen to change people's religion to Islam than to process these stateless Malaysians' applications. It is one racist organisation headed by a racist home minister,” he said.
Ramasamy also accused the NRD of changing the religion of 7,000 Hindus to Islam in their identity cards.
“When these Hindus try to change back their religion on their identity cards, they had to go to Shariah court and go through all the hassle. Similarly, these stateless people are facing a long standing problem where applications takes years to process,” he said.
Of the 591 cases currently pending, a total 358 are for citizenship applications while the remaining 233 are for identity cards and birth certificates.
On average, he said it takes the NRD three years to process an application for an identity card by a stateless individual or up to five years for citizenship.
Some cases, however, have dragged on longer, he said, citing as example one case that he said went on for 11 years.
Ramasamy said to take the issue forward, the committee he heads will be organising a roadshow.
“We also want more stateless people to come forward so that we can assist them in their applications,” he said.
