600 IC TO MORE THAN ONE PERSON

By :  BOO SU-LYN

KOTA KINABALU : There are 600 blue identity card numbers that are each being shared by more than one person, a National Registration Department (NRD) headquarters official told the royal inquiry on illegal immigrants here today.

Putrajaya NRD director (identity card division) Md Solehan Omar also denied that blue identity cards were issued to foreigners.

“I want to state that the issuance of identity cards is based on the law,” Solehan told the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI).

“A person can only get Malaysian identity cards if they’re Malaysian,” he added.

None of the lawyers, however, questioned Solehan on why there were 600 blue identity card numbers that were each being used by more than one person.

Solehan also said that “one identity card number can only be used for one owner.”

A few Pakistani and Indian immigrants testified recently about obtaining blue identity cards — either from runners or from the NRD directly — within just a few years of arriving in Sabah.

According to the Citizenship Rules 1964, people who want to apply to be a Malaysian citizen by naturalisation must become a permanent resident for more than 12 years and have been in Malaysia for more than 10 years.

An Indian immigrant testified yesterday that he received a blue identity card without providing any supporting documents, but only with an application form filled by an NRD officer that wrongly stated his place of birth as Tuaran.

Another Indian immigrant testified last Tuesday that he received a blue identity card from the NRD after staying in Sabah for six years, by just producing a statutory declaration that wrongly stated his place of birth as Papar.

Asked if there were problematic blue identity cards being issued in Sabah, Solehan stressed that the problems were merely about applications that could not be processed the usual way.

“Example, the picture is not the same as in the JPN records, the thumbprint is not the same as in the JPN records, the name is not the same,” he said, referring to the NRD’s Malay acronym.

“I didn’t say that the problem was about undeserving people (getting the identity cards),” added Solehan.

He also said that a special committee was formed in 2006 to resolve the issue of problematic identity cards in Sabah.

The NRD official added that the NRD would not actively inform the Election Commission (EC) if it discovered that blue identity cards were being issued to foreigners as there was an information-sharing system among government agencies on identity cards.

“ALIS is an agency link-up system where other government agencies can get data in identity cards, like the EC, the Public Service Department, the Health Ministry and the police,” said Solehan.

“(They share information like the) identity card number, name, address and place of birth,” he added.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the country’s longest serving prime minister who was in power from 1981 to 2003, has been accused of spearheading the so-called “Project IC”, in which citizenship was allegedly given to immigrants in exchange for their votes.

But former Sabah Chief Minister Tan Sri Harris Salleh, who administered the state from 1976 to 1985, denied to the RCI the existence of “Project IC”.

Dr Mahathir told a press conference recently that foreigners in Sabah had indeed received citizenship, but stressed that it was “within the law”. (TMI)