KUALA LUMPUR: The Home Ministry will introduce a new system to enable the police to check for criminal records of applicants seeking Malaysian citizenship, thus speeding up the entire process.
Deputy Home Minister Datuk Azis Jamman said that this is necessary as at present, the process of the ministry sending the applicants’ documentation to other agencies is done manually, which slows down the process of approval or rejection.
“The reason the approval process is so slow is because we send each document to other agencies, like the police, manually. There’s no specific system under the Home Ministry to identify if these applicants have a criminal record.
“As part of the ministry’s aspiration, I have been tasked with chairing a committee, involving all of the ministry’s agencies, to study how information can be shared within the ministry.
“Once the system is introduced, the police will enter all data needed by other agencies, such as the National Registration Department (NRD), if it involves an individual’s criminal record. NRD can access this system which will be introduced,” he told the Dewan Rakyat on Wednesday.
He was answering a supplementary question from Datuk Wong Tien Fatt (PH-DAP-Sandakan) over the issue of many Permanent Resident (PR) card holders’ citizenship applications still awaiting an answer decades later, with some even spanning 30 years.
Meanwhile, replying to Datuk Seri Ismail Abdul Muttalib’s (BN-Umno-Maran) supplementary question on how to prevent foreigners who illegally enter Malaysia from securing PR status, Azis stressed that any PR applications from these people would be rejected.
“As for foreigners who enter the country via illegal channels, we have never considered their applications for PR. Only those who go through the valid process (of entry into Malaysia) and stay for a certain period would be considered.
“Those who enter via ‘rat lanes’ (into Malaysia), we will arrest and deport. We do not compromise (on this).
“From 2008 to September 30, 2018, the NRD (National Registration Department) recorded 57,191 MyPR holders who have been given Malaysian citizenship,” he said.