Govt gives citizenship documents to 177 stateless Malaysians

KUALA LUMPUR: A group of 177 Malaysian Indians received their citizenship documents from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak (pic).

They are among the 1,054 stateless Indians whose applications for citizenship were approved this year.

"This is in line with the Government's aim to make our policies inclusive and fair to all communities, and this is something Barisan Nasional upholds.

"This group is not abandoned, although Indians make up 7.4 percent of Malaysians," said Najib in his speech at a ceremony here on Tuesday.

Also present were Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Cabinet Committee of Indian Community (CCIC) executive committee chairman Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.

Najib hit out at the Opposition for claiming that 300,000 Malaysian Indians were stateless.

He said the Mega MyDaftar initiative which went nationwide to find stateless Indians, only identified 2,500 stateless Indians.

"This claim of 300,000 is fiction. It is like the story that we brought in 40,000 Bangladeshi voters to vote in the last general election or that Malaysia will be bankrupt," said Najib.

The Government launched the MyDaftar initiative in Feb 2011 to resolve documentation issues faced by the Indian community.

It is organised by the Government's Special Implementation Taskforce which identifies and assists members of the Indian community who do not have proper documents to obtain them.

The Government's Socio-economic Development of the Indian Community Unit (Sedic), which comes under the Prime Minister's Department, will help the new recipients register for all Government programmes that Malaysian citizens are entitled to, such as 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M).