KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 3 — The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry is well aware of the problems faced by foreign Catholic nuns in getting long-term visas for their unpaid volunteer work at elderly homes in Malaysia, its deputy minister said.
Deputy minister Hannah Yeoh today took to Facebook to assure the public that her assistant has been in communication with the charitable organisation Little Sisters of the Poor.
“The office of Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah is also liaising with the Immigration department and the Home Ministry is also aware of the situation and they are looking into it,” Yeoh wrote on her official Facebook page, referring to the her minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.
Yeoh was commenting on a public letter that was published on news portal Malaysiakini on September 28 and circulating on the messaging app WhatsApp, with the letter titled “Immigration woes for Little Sisters of the Poor”.
In the letter, the Little Sisters of the Poor in Malaysia’s honorary adviser Paul Arokiasamy spoke of the challenges of getting long-term visas for the foreign nuns who provide free care for a total of 135 elderly residents in two homes in Penang and Kuala Lumpur.
Noting that these Malaysian elderly residents are neglected by their own family, he said the nuns volunteer without pay or allowance to carry out elderly care including feeding, cleaning, bathing and attending to them.
Paul cited the country’s immigration policies that only allowed a 12-month visa approval for the foreign volunteer nuns via a costly and time-consuming process instead of granting a long-term visa which is only given to one person per religious house, noting that the Little Sisters of the Poor would have wanted to have at least three to five years’ approval for each volunteer nun.
“Our contention is that, if people who are contributing to the economic development of the country are given permanent resident passes and Malaysia My Second Home visas, why can’t the Immigration Department devise a category for us?
“After all, these nuns are looking after the wellbeing of elderly Malaysians. The elderly have a right to dignified palliative care and last rites that we give them. We take care of the residents until their demise,” he wrote in the letter.
“Why are we denying such rights to this category of Malaysians? We honestly cannot find Malaysians who will do the kind of work the nuns are doing. On top of that, they are not paid.
“We do not charge the residents. The home is operated by donations, contributions and also monthly collections done by the nuns in various Catholic churches in the country,” he added.
Paul also noted the worsening situation as the Immigration Department had decided since January to disallow the renewal of the 12-month pass for the nuns, noting that the Little Sisters of the Poor has written to Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin for a policy decision to accommodate its extension request and that it has been forwarded to the Home Ministry’s secretary-general and is awaiting the Immigration division’s decision.
“In the meantime, the extension process has been very difficult because Immigration refuses, asking first for feedback on the long-term policy from the ministry. Ministry officers are not cooperating to the request by the Immigration director-general for the extension. Only the ministry can advise the Immigration Department on what’s happening,” he said in his public letter.
In the letter, Paul also highlighted various efforts to highlight the Little Sisters of the Poor’s plight, including multiple letters to both the former and current immigration director-general, the home minister and secretary general, adding that they have even written to both Dr Wan Azizah and Yeoh as the organisation is registered under the latter two’s ministry’s Welfare Department.
Earlier today, Paul urged the government to consider giving the nuns at least a three-year visa for them to properly run the Little Sisters of the Poor in Penang, and the St Francis Xavier Home for the Elderly in Kuala Lumpur.
The four nuns currently serving in the two homes are from Sri Lanka, Singapore and South Korea.
He noted that they had to get foreign nuns as there were not many local Catholic nuns, also explaining that the nuns are not paid, do not get any perks, do not get holidays and only get time off once in a few years to go home.
Penang state exco member Jagdeep Singh Deo had today also called on the federal government to consider approving longer-term visas for these nuns, adding that the Immigration Department and Home Ministry are set to visit the organisation’s KL home next week to look for solutions to the visa problem.
