KOTA KINABALU: Many Peninsular Malaysians serving in Sabah have labelled those with ‘bin’ or ‘binti’ in their identity cards as Muslims or Malays automatically.
The issue of ‘bin’ and ‘binti’ has long been one of the many issues of identity classification in the state that needs to be clarified and understood.
Hence, the Sabah Cultural Board, as the custodian of the state’s diverse culture and ethnic groups, is taking a proactive step to organise a workshop, which will discuss such issues among members of the relevant agencies and bodies.
Its chairman, Datuk Wences Anggang, disclosed that the workshop will be held on September 2 and 3 at the Ming Garden Hotel and Residences with participation of about 80 people from 26 ethnic associations in Sabah, native political parties, State Museum, Native Affairs Office and other relevant agencies.
The workshop, he said, is aimed at exposing the participants to the practices relating to identity and classification, types of classification, and to come up with resolutions and suggestions for the registration practices and procedures by the National Registration Department, Statistics Department, hospitals and other departments in Sabah.
“The results from the workshop will be presentated to the cabinet for further action,” said Wences at a press conference at the Sabah Cultural Board building here yesterday.
“Identity and classification issues in the state have long remained debatable issues. We often hear of complaints such as that their ethnicity is not classified or acknowledged when registering their child’s birth or when registering for identity cards.
“The relevant departments only list the main ethnic groups in their database, while the lesser known minority ethnic groups are classified as ‘lain-lain’ (others),” said Wences.
Another issue that will be highlighted in the workshop is the classification of children born of mixed Chinese and native ethnicity parentage, which in recent times had been generalised as ‘Sino Native’.
“The thing is, ‘native’ itself is the general term for ethnic classification. People want their ethnicity to be specifically identified when registering births or when filling in any forms,” he said.
The workshop will consist of six talks by speakers from the relevant departments, namely, a talk on the ‘Mission and Vision Towards Sabah’s Ethnic Identity Refinement’ by the Sabah Cultural Board and the ‘Issues, Problems and Challenges of Identity Acknowledgment in Diversity in Sabah’ by Dr Paul Porodong from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS).
Other talks include ‘Birth Registration Procedures at Government Hospitals and Clinics’ by the State Health Department, ‘Identification Registration Procedures of Birth Certificates and Identity Cards’ by the National Registration Department, the Native Affairs Office’s approach in handling identity-related issues by district officers through the Native Affairs Office, and the ‘Malaysian Population Identity Classification Policy in Census’, by the Statistics Department.