PROOF NEEDED TO INVESTIGATE ‘TWIN’ IC

By : SANDRA SOKIAL

SABAH National Registration Department needs physical proof before it can proceed with investigations on the allegation over the existence of ‘twin’ identity cards (IC) issue.

Its director, Ismail Ahmad, said that no one had come forward to lodge an official complaint on the matter.

“I only learned about it from the papers … but there is nothing that we (NRD) can do without physical proof, like the identity cards of these two persons.

“Anyone can say that two people are holding the same IC number, but we cannot tell who is genuine and who is not without seeing their documents,” he told The Borneo Post when contacted yesterday.

Ismail was commenting on Tawau member of parliament Datuk Chua Soon Bui’s claim that a senior teacher attached to one of the government schools in the district shared the same IC number with another person residing in Kota Belud.

She called on the NRD and Election Commission to verify the authenticity of the identity cards.

“We have received similar cases in the past, but the complainants came to the office to verify the matter with us. Sometimes it is due to technical mistakes, normally mis-numbered.

“One number makes a lot of difference to one’s identity card. So if the complainant does not come forward, we cannot check what and where went wrong. Both of them must be physically present to show us their IC or MyKad, because sometimes even photocopied documents can be falsified,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sabah Election Commission Director Datuk Md Idrus Ismail also said they had yet to receive any official complaint over the duplication of the said IC numbers in their electoral roll.

“We cannot do anything without the official result and verification from the NRD,” he said.

Idrus added that action to either fix or remove the names from the electoral roll could only be done after getting the ‘black and white’ from the NRD.

Chua had stated during a press conference on Saturday that she had forwarded the identity card number to the relevant ministers and the EC for verification so as to determine the rightful owner.

“We want to know who, among the two, is the authentic Malaysian citizen,” she said. (theborneopost)