KOTA KINABALU: UPKO Citizenship and Security Bureau chairman Datuk Donald Peter Mojuntin should not be too quick to blame civil servants for the delay in citizenship approval process for Sabahans born in Brunei Darussalam.
PKR Penampang information chief Honorsius Datuk Alfred Bosuin claimed part of the blame should fall on UPKO president Tan Sri Bernard Dompok who is a federal cabinet minister and despite being in constant contact with Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussin, had not raised the issue with the latter.
Honorious in a statement yesterday expressed PKR Penampang’s surprise on the sad situation of being unable to register genuine Sabahans as citizens despite there being several Sabahans in the federal cabinet.
“It is especially sad because the president of Donald’s own political party is a senior member of the cabinet in the ruling Barisan National coalition,” he said in response to the call by Donald for the National Registration Department (NRD) to consider setting up a special unit to handle citizenship cases involving Sabahans who were born in Brunei before September 16, 1963.
Honorius was of the opinion that at each cabinet meeting, Dompok should have asked the Minister of Home Affairs to solve the problem which Donald spoke about.
“Why would Datuk Donald blame the innocent ‘civil servants’ who are subjected to the instructions of the Home Minister and/or the cabinet as a whole? Is he for real in that accusation?
“It can be inferred that the civil servants are going against the need of the people but is it for real? It cannot be the case as we believe the civil servants would have acted immediately on this as any delay as serious as what Datuk Donald had mentioned would not have taken this long to resolve.
“His president (Tan Sri Bernard Dompok) is in the federal cabinet! Datuk Donald seems to infer and indicate that there has been no discussion between his president Tan Sri Bernard Dompok and Datuk Hishammudin Hussein of such ‘a problem’ as he described. Why else would he blame the civil servants?
“And if there has been a discussion of this serious matter between the cabinet members, why on earth would civil servants not adhere to the instructions of the minister or the cabinet?” he questioned.
He added that PKR Penampang also aspired and would propose to the government to allow the state government to take over the administration of NRD as it had now come to a serious situation where registration of a citizen had gone beyond our borders.
“We in Sabah should innovate and let Sabah (through a state department) who is familiar with the state and its borders and its people to process the registration and issuance of the birth certificates and identity cards.
“Probably, the Chief Minister’s Department can ‘Borneonise’ the entire administration of the newly state administered National Registration Department (for Sabah only) so that Sabah will have full records and documents of those who are holding the identity cards in Sabah.
“We can also do this by administering through the Chief Minister’s office of the federal state NRD as our reasons are also in tandem with the same powers given to the Chief Minister on being able to determine who can enter Sabah vide the immigration counters.
“If the state Chief Minister can decide who can enter Sabah and restrict any entry at the discretion of the Chief Minister, why can’t we in Sabah decide who is born and to be registered in Sabah?” he said.
According to Honorsius, the mechanism is already localized these days with the good work of the Mobile Courts initiated by Tan Sri Richard Malanjun along with his professional and legal team who are doing so much patriotic work to ensure that only genuine Sabahans will get the birth certificates which is a pre-requisite of getting the identity card.
“We believe that the government cannot delay this anymore and as aforesaid, if the instructions had been given by the relevant minister, there is no way that civil servants would not have resolved the problem mentioned by Datuk Donald,” he stressed.