Be cautious when speeding up citizenship approvals, govt urged

The government has been advised to practice caution when speeding up approval of citizenship applications for fear of possible abuse of authority.

“We must be careful about this matter to ensure that no one abuses it,” said Assistant Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Jahid Jahim in response to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s announcement on the matter.

Najib had said on Saturday that the government would speed up approval for citizenship applications including late birth registration. It was one of 11 people-friendly measures announced in conjunction with his first 100 days in office as prime minister.

Najib said that in Sabah 36,000 applications for registration of births were received since 2005 and that 92 percent of these were approved, while 80 percent of 19,000 applications in Sarawak since the same year were approved.

On citizenship, he said the number of applications pending as at Nov 1 last year was 34,000 and that as of last month 46 percent had been approved and efforts would be intensified to resolve the remaining applications.

Although he welcomed the announcement as good for the people of the State, Jahid, who is also Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) Youth chief, urged the government to set up a practical mechanism to detect possible abuses.

He stressed the importance of setting up the mechanism to ensure that the effort would benefit the targeted group.

According to reports an estimated 444,000 foreigners are in the State from which 230,000 of them are legally employed while 130,000 are illegal immigrants and the rest are refugees from the Philippines. Meanwhile, Bernama reported Consumer Association of Sabah and Labuan (Cash) president Datuk Patrick Sindu as also calling on the government to be careful when approving citizenship applications.

“We fear another catastrophe will happen. The issue of citizenship is never-ending in Sabah beginning with the IC Project in the early 1980s.

“We fear more foreigners, namely illegal immigrants, would see this as an opportunity for them to apply for citizenship using doubtful identification documents,” he said. Sindu added that mobilising of courts to rural areas, whereby magistrates could do the proper vetting, was the best way to resolve late birth registration issues.