Another Sabahan given PR card
KOTA KINABALU:
The citizenship controversy continues with another Malaysian claiming that he has been issued with a Permanent Resident (PR) card. Liaw Ah Kui from Kampung Tambulang, Tuaran said that the National Registration Department (NRD) issued him a red MyKad bearing the number 3308l5-12-5l65 thatcomes with PR status. Liaw, who was born at Kimanis Estate in Paparin 1933 to a Dusun mother from Tambunan, brought the matter up to Sabah DAP Local Government and Housing Bureau Chief Edward Ewol Mujie. According to Liaw, when the Government started an exercise to issue ICs to all the people of Sabah after the formation of Malaysia, he was given a yellow lC bearing the number H255047. After that he was issued a Sijil Anak Negeri (No52/77) by the Tuaran Native Court but his problem did not end there. When the Government decided to change the IC to a new format, he was given a red IC (H6018313) instead of a blue one which denotes that he is a Bumiputra. Liaw did try to apply to change his red IC to blue but was not successful. He further stated that when the Government decided to issue the Bunga Raya IC, he was given a red Bunga Raya IC and later a red MyKad which he is holding now. Mujie said the most perplexing part is that all Liaw’s eight siblings have been given a blue MyKad in spite of him holding PR status. At the same time Liaw said he was registered as a voter in Kiulu constituency and was allowed to cast his vote at the voting centre at Kilang Bata, Tuaran. He voted in all the past general elections in Sabah until 2004. However, when he went to vote this year, he was told that his name no longer existed in the electoral roll. Mujie said he was exposing this matter to show how inconsistent the Government is in dealing with matter pertaining to the status of a real Bumiputra. He is also wondering why the Election Commission had allowed Liaw to be registered as a voter and vote when he was holding a red IC. Mujie said that Sabah DAP would help Liaw bring up this matter to NRD. The citizenship controversy started after a Sino-Kadazan woman, Yong Lee Hua, 78, was given a PR status after losing her MyKad last year. The NRD explained that it had mistakenly replaced Yong’s plastic identity card with a blue identity card in 1996. NRD Public Relations Officer Jainisah Mohd Noor said in a report by a national daily yesterday that a plastic card, which had been issued to Yongin 1973, only allowed her PRstatus, and Yong had never been registered as a citizen. “This is why she was issued a MyPR last year, when she lost the blue identity card to pickpockets,” Jainisah said in a report by the New Straits Times. Following the controversy, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Tan Sri Bernard Dompok called for the Sabah NR.D to be overhauled.
