CAUTION NEEDED IN APPROVING CITIZENSHIP APPLICATIONS

KOTA KINABALU, July 12 (Bernama) -- While welcoming Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib's announcement that the government would speed up approval for citizenship applications, including late birth registration, caution was also needed in the matter, said Consumer Association of Sabah and Labuan (Cash) president Datuk Patrick Sindu.

"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 told Bernama here when asked to comment on the announcement, one of 11 announced by Najib in conjunction with his 100th day in office.

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.

Also welcoming Najib's announcement, Assistant Sabah Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Jahid Jahim, who is also Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) Youth Chief, said a mechanism should be in place to detect the possibility of misuse of authority involving citizenship applications in Sabah.

He also said establishing the mechanism was important to ensure the approaches undertaken benefited the targeted group.

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.