Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah
KUCHING (April 22): The application for citizenship status under Section 15A of the Federal Constitution is only applicable for children who are genuinely stateless without any nationality, said Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah.
“If a minor has a passport of another nation such as Indonesia or the Philippines, it means he already has a nationality and the application for citizenship will not be able to proceed under Section 15A,” said told a press conference conducted via Zoom yesterday.
Fatimah said such applications would be rejected because the Federal Constitution does not allow any citizen to hold dual citizenship.
Other reasons why a child is stateless is because the parents’ marriage was not properly registered, or due to failure to produce documents from the courts or welfare department proving a child is legally under the guardianship of an individual, she explained.
According to her, she had co-chaired the first meeting of the recently reinstated Sarawak Special Committee on Citizenship in Putrajaya on Tuesday with Deputy Home Minister (I) Datuk Seri Dr Ismail Mohamed Said.
“During the meeting, we discussed 101 citizenship applications from Sarawak for the 2019-2020 period. Applications before 2019 that have already been processed have been submitted to the Home Minister for further actions.”
She also said application for citizenship under Section 15A would now go through the state-level National Registration Department for processing and evaluation to ensure the documentation is complete, before it is submitted to the panel committee for consideration.
To make sure all the required documents are in place, there will be a checklist to ensure the documents are in order, while the applicants will be asked to provide whatever documents that are missing, she said.
Fatimah said the rationale behind this was to ensure all applications reaching the committee would have the required documents for their citizenship status to be considered promptly.
She added the next meeting of the special committee would be held in Kuching in the second week of May.
“Documents such as school certificate or health card would be able to assist in the application for citizenship as it could prove the existence of the child in Sarawak.”
However, she said the decision on granting citizenship was at the discretion of Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin as enshrined in the Federal Constitution, and the committee was only to advise on the applications.
Regardless, she said her ministry would soon be organising more awareness programmes related to citizenship under Section 15A.
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