Sabah NRD rubbishes claim it registered 80,000 late births

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) has rubbished an NGO’s claim that it has approved as many as 80,000 late birth registrations over the last 10 years.

Speaking to the media today, department director Ismail Ahmad said since 2000, the department had approved only about 46,000 late birth registrations and insisted that the approvals were done after the courts had endorsed the applications.

“Everything was done according to the law. We only process after these applications are certified by the judiciary. We don’t simply issue birth certificates or MyKads,” he said.

Ismail said sometimes people forget that in Sabah, the natives are not just the Kadazan or Dusun but also the Bajau, Murut, Rungus, Suluk and many other races.

On Wednesday, an NGO in Keningau questioned the department after a Facebook user alleged that the number of late birth registrations approved in the state had reached a staggering 80,000.

The NGO, Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS), also claimed that it was unfair to always blame native parents for causing a delay in the registration of their children. It added that even if this was the case, the number was very small at just 1%.

On attempts to “steal” citizenships by certain people, Ismail said there were attempts by locals to pass illegal immigrant children as their own.

“These children were brought by the locals who claimed them as their own. Maybe they had been taking care of these children all this while and now want these children to be listed as their biological kids.

“However, we can easily detect this. We know who are locals and who are not just by interviewing them.”

Nevertheless, Ismail said these are isolated cases that had happened all over Sabah, mostly in big cities like Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan and Tawau.

Ismail also said the department had issued 157 new documents to fire victims since last year.

“This number is small compared with the total number of victims from at least eight fire incidents that have occurred.”

He rubbished the assertion that illegal immigrants could take advantage of such fires and get MyKad issued for themselves.

Ismail added the department is only replacing MyKads and birth certificates for those whose information is already in the database.

He also pointed out that most of the documents lost are birth certificates as MyKads are usually kept in wallets.

So far, he said the department had no reason to stop its mobile unit launched as part of its effort to help ease the burden of fire victims, such as those in the Banggi island.

He also said the NRD had been using its mobile unit to help disaster victims since 2000 without any problems or criticisms. - FMT