He’s listed as ‘unnamed’ and femalesource<\/p>\n
KUALA LUMPUR: Not only was he listed as “Unnamed” in his birth certificate but to add insult to injury, he was listed as a “female”.
\nThese, however, are the least of 44-year-old N. Rajendran’s problems.\u00a0 When he was 12, his name was finally “officially recognised” and he was assigned the correct gender. However, a slip-up at the National Registration Department cost him his citizenship and he ended up getting a red identity card meant for permanent residents instead of one for citizens.<\/p>\n
And since then, Rajendran has been going to numerous NRD offices in the Klang Valley weekly in an effort to rectify the mistake.
\nHowever, after 30 years of lugging a thick folder full of documents and a stash of testimonials from various people, the electrician still has not got back his citizenship.<\/p>\n
And he is getting tired of listening to the same answer each time: “Tunggulah, balik minggu depan!” (Wait, come back next week!) “My parents were citizens when they applied for my IC. My older and younger siblings are also citizens and my four children are citizens but why am I not a Malaysian?” asked an exasperated Rajendran.<\/p>\n
He was among 150 people who turned up at a birth certificate and identity card form-filling drive at Brickfields, yesterday. The event was organised by Human and Nature Development Society (Hands) and several independent lawyers.\u00a0 It was also attended by Bukit Bintang MCA division chairman Datuk Dr Lee Chong Meng. Most of those who turned up at the event yesterday had waited many years for their MyKad and birth certificates despite having valid documents.<\/p>\n
S. Mathiyalagan is one of those who have been trying tirelessly to secure an identification document for his wife, Madhavi , and his 12-year-old daughter M. Arvina. Madhavi is currently considered stateless as she has no identification documents. She was adopted when she was 4 years old and had not been able to trace her biological parents to prove her identity. Her case has been “under review” by the NRD for more than 18 years. To compound the problem, Arvina was stripped of her citizenship last year when she went to apply for her MyKad. “The officer insisted that our daughter wasn’t a citizen because I had no marriage certificate. He subsequently changed my daughter’s citizenship status on her birth certificate and printed ‘bukan warganegara’ (not a citizen) on it. “How can this be when my three other children are also citizens and have their MyKad?” said Mathiyalagan.<\/p>\n
T. Rajasekaran, a lawyer volunteering at the event, said there were many similar cases. “Sometimes one twin would get a MyKad but the other’s application would be rejected and put on hold for years,” he said. He added that this happened despite the applicants having proper documents. Rajasekaran said about 70 per cent of the 30,000 stateless people in Selangor had the necessary documents but were still unable to get birth certificates or MyKad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He’s listed as ‘unnamed’ and femalesource KUALA LUMPUR: Not only was he listed as “Unnamed” in his birth certificate but to add insult to injury, he was listed as a “female”. These, however, are the least of 44-year-old N. Rajendran’s problems.\u00a0 When he was 12, his name was finally “officially recognised” and he was assigned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[112,103],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borninmalaysia","category-indian","tag-discrimination","tag-marginalisation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}