Friday, May 29, 2009

KHIR TOYO CRITICISED HOME MINISTRY

SHAH ALAM, Malaysia: Former Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Khir Toyo(photo) criticised the Home Ministry for being slow in providing stateless Malaysians with proper birth certificates and identify cards.
“We hope that the Home Ministry and the minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein will be able to look at this issue objectively. I hope the ministry will be able to establish a special task force to help solve a problem which is at a very critical stage,” he said.
He said that Selangor Barisan Nasional (BN) compiled 5,000 cases from January 2008 and had submitted 200 applications to the Home Ministry but only 30 applications had been processed and of those, only 16 had been approved.
“I feel sad because there has not been any concrete action taken by the Home Ministry. We have compiled 5,000 cases and 10 per cent are Malays, 15 per cent are Chinese and 75 per cent are Indians,” he explained.
Khir stressed that if this problem was not solved, it would lead to a bigger social problem which will further weaken the government’s and BN’s credibility.
Last year, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) wants the Government to set up a special task force to look into the growing problem of “stateless” Malaysians.
Commissioner Datuk N. Siva Subramaniam said the task force must specifically look into the core problem and others like documentation and to solve them. He said the issue needed to be addressed urgently.
“It is sad to learn that some Malaysians still do not have identification documents now.”This is a violation of the basic human rights as no eligible Malaysian should be denied the right of citizenship,” he said when commenting on the increasing number of cases of “stateless” Malaysians that attracted national attention.

Courtesy: The Malaysian Insider

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