Unclaim MyKad: City folk apathetic

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KUCHING: City folk are the bigger culprits when it comes to failing to collect their MyKad, it was revealed yesterday.

MyKad AT LAST: Ahmad (centre) gives Ezzatul (right) her MyKad when they located her to her home during the operation yesterday evening. At left is Lian.

MyKad AT LAST: Ahmad (centre) gives Ezzatul (right) her MyKad when they located her to her home during the operation yesterday evening. At left is Lian.

“The fact that more city folks failed to claim their MyKad compared to their rural counterparts baffles us. Some people living as close as Kenyalang, Pending and Tabuan which is a stone’s throw away from the National Registration Department (JPN) Sarawak at Simpang Tiga also did not collect their MyKad from 2006,” deputy director of operations at National Registration Department, Ahmad Khazali, said.

As many as 19,055 MyKads have not been collected in Sarawak by applicants from 2006 until last year.

Ahmad said that Kuching has the highest number of uncollected MyKad at 4,035, followed by Miri 3,083.

He added that Petra Jaya recorded 1,351 uncollected MyKad, which is among the highest in Sarawak, followed by Sibu and Bintulu at 341 and 1,126 respectively.

Meanwhile, Sarawak director of Immigration Datu Robert Lian said that some residents in the rural areas such as Bario and Ba Kelalan still failed to collect their MyKad.

“There are nine cases in Bario and four in Ba’Kelalan,” he said.

Lian said his department together with People’s Vigilante Corps (Rela) and JPN will help locate and notify these individuals in rural areas and help them collect their cards if they do not have the means to travel to the nearest Registration Department.

“We hope that the media will work together with us by telling this to the public. It is important to create awareness so that they will take this matter a lot more serious,” said Lian.

“I hope the public realise that MyKad is not only for identification purposes, but it is also a security document. We do not want to have cases whereby immigration or police officers questioning individuals’ identity because they do not have their MyKad with them,” he said.

Rela deputy director Colonel John Gila, meanwhile, said they are prepared to help JPN in this operation.

“With more than 10,000 Rela personnel all over Sarawak, we are more than willing to help JPN in locating individuals, especially those in the rural areas who have failed to collect their MyKad,” he said.

The operations began yesterday evening whereby an applicant named Ezzatul Irqien Qistina Mohamad Helmi, 16, was met by officers from JPN and Reka together with Ahmad, Lian and John.

When asked by reporters on why she did not collect her MyKad which she applied for in 2008, she said she was not informed by JPN of the status of her application.

“I applied for a new MyKad after my previous MyKad was stolen from my mother’s handbag when her car was broken into two years ago,” she said when met at her house in Kenyalang Park yesterday.

“After I applied for my new MyKad, I have not received any information regarding my MyKad until today,” she added.

Ezzatul was very happy and thankful to JPN for their concern and dedication on the matter, adding that before this, she relied on her birth certificate for identification purposes.

Her grandmother, Jainas, said she was very happy that the government took the rakyat’s well-being seriously as the public could be quite careless regarding important matters such as their identification documents.