KOTA KINABALU: After five decades of feeling that she did not belong to any country, hawker Loo Chew Lee can finally say she is a Malaysian citizen after getting her MyKad two months ago.
The 55-year-old, born to Indonesian Chinese immigrants in 1970, said that after she was born, her parents only managed to help her apply for a red identity card (IC), which is for non-citizen permanent residents.
The youngest of four siblings said that although she had a red IC, she could not do many things – such as travelling or furthering her studies – without going through extra procedures.
To travel, Loo had to apply for visas to every international destination, and instead of a passport, she carried a Certificate of Identity, a document so unfamiliar that some immigration officers even stopped her to verify it.
"At the airport, everyone else would board first. I had to wait until the end," she said when met here recently.
Before managing her family’s chicken soto stall, she yearned to be a teacher but could not sit for the teaching certificate required to progress, so she settled for working in a kindergarten for seven years.
"What stayed with me most was the feeling of being left out. Whenever benefits or opportunities arose, I felt I had no place in them," Loo said, adding that her sister was in a similar predicament and eventually emigrated to Australia.
Her two elder brothers were luckier as they were born before Malaysia's formation and managed to obtain citizenship afterwards.
Loo continued applying for citizenship, sitting for the test three times, even passing on her first try in 1989, but never received any follow-up and so lost out on her opportunity to gain citizenship.
After Loo’s third and final attempt in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt, and she heard nothing.
It was her friends who urged her to seek help from Philip Yap, then a council member in Tawau, who had helped other stateless individuals.
She contacted him in 2023, and over the next two years, Yap, now the Pakatan Harapan candidate for Sri Tanjong, followed up on her case, submitting her documents in Putrajaya and checking on the status.
By then, Loo had resigned herself to just having a red IC. She said she told herself that whether or not her application succeeded made little difference.
"I am happy and grateful that Yap kept helping me through these two years," she said.
Today, she focuses on the small but meaningful changes in her daily life.
"I can use my MyKad for the Budi95 fuel subsidy now," she said with a smile.
