Stateless folk get help

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MIRI: The National Registration Department (NRD) is expected to deploy mobile units in the Murum Dam territory in Kapit Division, central Sarawak, in an effort to register stateless folk who will be displaced by the building of the RM3bil dam.

There are some 2,800 people living in eight settlements in the region, earmarked to be flooded by the Murum Dam reservoir and most of them are Penans.

Speedier job: National Registration Department staff registering stateless Penans who do not have any birth certificates or MyKads in Kapit division in central Sarawak yesterday.

Sources said preliminary ground visits by VIPs to the area found that one in three of the people there were without birth certificates and MyKad.

Ulu Rejang MP Datuk Billy Joo Abit has requested the department to look into the plight of these people.

“I will be going to the Murum area to visit villagers who will be affected by the Murum Dam.

“If they are uprooted without their registration done, they will have tremendous problems applying for birth certificates and MyKad because the department will not be able to trace their original birth place any more,’’ he told The Star yesterday.

Abit added that the department had done a good job of implementing a speedier and more efficient way of registering stateless indigenous natives living in the deep interior of Sarawak.

Mobile units deployed in remote settlements have approved applications for birth certificates and MyKads on the spot.

The Penans, the ethnic group with the most number of people without birth certificate and MyKad, have formed the largest group of people registered during the department’s mobile rounds.

Tinggan Jate, a Penan community elder in Lusong Laku near the Sarawak-Kalimantan border, said the mobile units made it much easier for those who did not have the money or transportation to travel to the urban centres.

“Before this, we had to go to Bintulu or Kuching just to check on the status of the applications. Now, everything is done here. It has saved us a lot of money and time,’’ he said.

In Lusong Laku and the surrounding villages, the mobile unit has already issued 109 new birth certificates and 220 new MyKads.

Abit said Deputy Home Minister Jelaing Mersat has been instrumental in getting the registration done more efficiently and swiftly.