‘Don’t let Mega Mydaftar campaign be used for political propaganda’

DAP assemblyman says the 23 centres nationwide must operate effectively to solve the problems of stateless Indians.

PETALING JAYA: DAP’s RSN Rayer hopes the newly announced “Mega Mydaftar” campaign to help Malaysian Indians without identification documents will not be used as propaganda by MIC to fish for votes ahead of the upcoming 14th general election (GE14).

The Seri Delima assemblyman said the 23 centres nationwide must operate effectively to solve the problems of 300,000 stateless Indians and not be used as centres to campaign for MIC and BN.

“After 60 years’ of independence, it is shocking to note that there is a staggering number of 300,000 Indians who do not possess Mykad and birth certificates, and are facing other citizenship problems in this country.”

In a statement today, he said the figure is not exaggerated by the opposition and the Mydaftar effort, as announced by MIC president Dr S Subramniam, was long overdue.

“I hope this announcement, which comes in the run-up to GE14, is a genuine effort to help those who are undergoing hardship in their everyday lives because of the failure to be issued MyKad and birth certificates.”

Subramaniam, who is also the health minister, yesterday said the campaign would run from June 3 to 26 as a continuation of the “Mydaftar” campaign implemented by the government previously, when 12,000 applications were received by those who had problems.

Rayer asked for the locations of the centres in Penang, saying the state government would also want to assist the stateless Indians there.

“There have been many instances in the past where Indian students were unable to enrol in government schools and sit for exams because of lack of proper documents.

“Hopefully, this will now be a thing of the past under this new ‘Mega Mydaftar’ campaign.”

Subramaniam, when announcing the new campaign, said the opposition had been falsely announcing that 300,000 Indians had yet to possess MyKad.

He said among the 23 locations were Ipoh, Taiping, Sitiawan and Teluk Intan. -FMT