MOST Malaysians move house at least once in their lives, and plenty do it several times before settling down. Very few of them update their MyKad address when they do.
If your identity card still shows the house you grew up in rather than the flat you have been renting for the last three years, you are far from alone.
But could that laziness actually land you a fine?
Verdict:
TRUE
Under Regulation 15 of the National Registration Regulations 1990, any Malaysian who moves to a new place of residence for a period of 90 days or more is legally required to update the address on their identity card.
That is not a suggestion or a guideline. It is a regulation with the force of law behind it.
The requirement applies whether you have bought a new home, moved in with a partner, relocated for work or are renting anywhere you intend to stay for three months or more.
It does not matter whether you still own your old address or plan to move back one day. If you are living somewhere new for 90 days or longer, your MyKad must reflect that.
The regulation further stipulates that the address change must be made within 14 days of moving to the new residence by visiting the nearest National Registration Department (NRD) office.
The penalties for failing to comply sit under Regulation 25 of the same National Registration Regulations 1990, which prescribes a fine of up to RM20,000, imprisonment for up to three years, or both for any contravention of the regulations.
That is worth reading twice. Up to RM20,000 and up to three years in prison. For not updating your address.
The parent legislation, the National Registration Act 1959, goes even further. Under Section 6(2)(u) of the Act, the Home Minister has the power to prescribe penalties of up to RM50,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both for any breach of the regulations made under the Act.
In practice, enforcement tends to focus on situations where the discrepancy matters, such as during elections, when the address on your MyKad determines your voting constituency, or during emergencies like the Movement Control Order in 2020 and 2021, when police used MyKad addresses to verify whether individuals were within their permitted travel radius.
The process of updating your address is straightforward.
You need to visit any NRD branch with your current MyKad and a supporting document proving your new address, such as an electricity or water bill, a tenancy agreement, a sale and purchase agreement, or a letter from your village head, assemblyman or member of Parliament.
The fee for the address change is RM10 for citizens and RM40 for non-citizens, as a new card must be issued because the address is printed on the card surface rather than stored only on the chip.
Workplace addresses, office addresses and post office boxes are not accepted. The address on your MyKad must be a permanent residential address in Malaysia.
The requirement to provide supporting documents was tightened in May 2019 after the NRD discovered cases where 50 to 100 people had registered the same address, and some had registered empty plots of land with no house as their permanent residence.
For most Malaysians, the risk of being hauled up specifically for an outdated MyKad address remains low.
But the legal obligation is real, the penalty provisions are on the books, and the one situation where it is most likely to bite you, an election or a police checkpoint, tends to be exactly the moment when you cannot do anything about it.
Updating it takes about half an hour at an NRD counter and costs RM10. The fine for not doing it can be up to RM20,000. The maths is not complicated.
Sources:
1. https://www.jpn.gov.my/en/
