30,000 stateless Indians in limbo

KUALA LUMPUR: The government was urged yesterday to set up a special unit to cut red tape in the National Registration Department and solve the plight of about 30,000 stateless members of the Indian community.

Technicalities over birth registrations are causing endless suffering for these people, depriving them of proper education and jobs, and subjecting them to the threat of deportation, a politician said.

MIC Youth chief T. Mohan said the MIC was overwhelmed with cases of stateless people, currently handling more than 500 cases.

"The irony is that whenever we highlight individual cases in the media, NRD's response in solving the cases is fast.

"People who go through the normal process of applying to the NRD are made to wait for decades.

"Thus, the urgent need to set up a special unit to handle these cases," added Mohan, who highlighted several cases of stateless people at his office here yesterday.

He cited the case of A. Sakthivel, 28, the offspring of a Malaysian father and Indian mother, who needs urgent help as the Immigration Department had ordered him to leave Malaysia by Oct 2.

Sakthivel was born in India but his late father, M. Annamalai, failed to register his birth with the Malaysian High Commission there.

While his four siblings are Malaysian citizens, unemployed Sakthivel had been in the country on a student passport, which his father had to renew annually.

"After my father's death in 2001, my passport was not renewed and on Sept 3, when I went to the Immigration Department, I was given a month to leave the country," Sakthivel said. "I'm at a loss as my family is here and I have no one in India."

College student N. Kavitha, 24, carries a red identity card although her biological mother and father were Malaysians.

For some reason, the NRD omitted the names and IC numbers of her biological parents in her birth certificate (BC), printing the particulars at the back of the document instead.

"When my adoptive parents applied for my IC, I was given a red IC as the NRD refused to acknowledge the details of my biological parents printed at the back of my BC," she said.

"I could not get a place in a public university or get a scholarship although I'm now being raised by my widowed mother."

Housewife Margaret Perinayaga, 52, who got a red IC because her mother's IC number was not entered in her BC, is still waiting for an answer to her appeal for a blue IC from the NRD.

R. Sittamparam
New Straits Times
24/09/08