KOTA KINABALU: Financial constraints, distance and no road access to their villages were among the reasons why many natives in the remote areas of Sabah do not register births and deaths.
For Nancy Padin Salutan and Wellet Dawa, it was the sheer distance from their place of birth, Long Pasia, to the nearest town, Sipitang, that deterred their parents from registering their births.Both the women of Lundayeh ethnicity gave evidence with the assistance of a court interpreter who translated the questions and their answers.
Nancy, when questioned by Conducting Officer Datuk Ariffin during the Royal Commission of Inquiry on the presence of illegal immigrants in Sabah yesterday said in the 1970s, the time she was born, it took one week of walking from Long Pasia to Sipitang.
Now a road connects Long Pasia to Sipitang but on a good day, it still takes three to four hours travelling by four- wheel drive to get to her village, she said.
According to Nancy, her parents only managed to register her birth in 2001 when the National Registration Department’s (NRD) mobile service went to Long Pasia. The village chief vouched for her and she was issued with a birth certificate there and then.
On the advice of the NRD officer, she applied for an identity card and obtained it three months later, she said adding that her husband however has yet to get his identity card. “For some reason my husband was issued a birth certificate but not an identity card. He is also stated as a permanent resident and not a citizen. This has caused us a lot of problems and we are also unable to register the births of our children,” she lamented.
Nancy said of their six children, the elder two were registered under her elder brother’s name as he has a blue Malaysian identity card. The other four are registered under her name after she obtained an identity card after 2001, she added.Sabah Law Association (SLA) representative, lawyer Ahmad Abdul Rahman, offered to help restore the legal status of her two eldest children to prevent inheritance problem in future while Azmi also promised to verify her husband’s status with the NRD.
Wellet, who is also from Long Pasia, said she was born in 1965 but her father only registered her birth in 2001.
When asked why it took her 36 years to have her birth registered, Wellet said she had to wait for her father to decide what to do.
“It was up to my father as he is the one who makes the decisions in all matters concerning our family,” she said.
Wellet said after getting her birth certificate via the NRD’s mobile registration unit in 2001, she applied for a Malaysian identity card and which was approved, and she later collected it at the NRD’s office in Sipitang.
Both Nancy and Wellet told the panel that many more people in their village still do not have any identification documents.
Meanwhile Commission chairman Tan Sri Steve Shim showed his concern to the predicament of the natives and said: “Other than the lackadaisical attitude of the natives, is there any other reasons not for them to register the births? These are the things we may look into.