Sabah NRD: Issuance of 3,200 birth certs delayed due to shortage of paper

KOTA KINABALU, Dec 10 — Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) has today apologised for a delay in issuing birth certificates due to a shortage of special printing paper, which has been out of stock since early October, causing some 3,200 late issuances.

Its director Khairrul Aminus Kamaruddin said that the shortage of paper to print the birth certificates came from a supplier in China, which recently suffered from flooding and cannot post out the shipment on time.

“The NRD would like to apologise for the delay and inconvenience it caused that was out of our control,” he said in a statement here.

He assured the people that the state NRD is trying its best to get the birth certificates printed as fast as possible and said they should be ready by next week.

“To avoid any more delays, our officer from here will personally go to the NRD headquarters in Putrajaya to retrieve the completed birth certificates by hand and distribute it as soon as possible to NRD branches across the state,” he said.

He further said that anyone affected by the delay and need emergency documents from NRD to travel can make an application at the NRD office.

Khairrul said that the state kept 24,801 stock pieces of the birth certificates for this year, but ran out in early October.

He said that the Sarawak NRD also had similar problems.

“We are normally always in contact with our headquarters to ensure there is adequate stock but this time the late arrival of stock was due to some flooding in China.

“New stock arrived in Malaysia on December 6 and started going to print on December 8,” he said.