CASES of foreign workers in agriculture plantations “marrying” local native ladies in rural Sarawak without legal procedure were exacerbating the statelessness crisis, the Society for Rights of Indigenous Peoples of Sarawak (Scrips) warned.
Most of these so-called marriages were not recorded with the National Registration Department (NRD), and any children these couples bear end up unregistered and often without birth certificates, the group’s secretary-general Michael Jok said.
Jok told The Vibes there were tens of thousands of foreign workers – especially from Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Myanmar – in Sarawak plantations.
“The cases of foreign male workers marrying local native ladies are becoming more frequent,” he said. “These so-called marriages are almost always unregistered with the NRD.
“The couple simply live together in the plantations and have children.
“Worse still, many of the local native ladies ‘married’ to foreign workers are also without proper personal documents.”
He said children born in such unions end up becoming Sarawak’s new stateless generation.
“Most of the foreign workers are usually in Sarawak for only a few years.
“After their contracts are over, they leave, and they also leave behind the local wives and children.”
Stateless children face enormous challenges trying to convince the NRD they were indeed born in Sarawak, Jok said.
Preventive laws needed
Jok said the state government must seriously consider enacting laws to prevent foreign contract workers in Sarawak from marrying locals without registering with the NRD.
He was commenting on the issue of stateless folk desperately trying to register as citizens via NRD mobile units that were deployed in Miri and Belaga.
He said statelessness was worsening every year as stateless adults also get “married” and bear children without first solving their citizenship woes.
In Miri, hundreds of stateless folk thronged the NRD mobile units every day from November 20 to 30, overwhelming the registration counters.
Sarawak United Peoples Party secretary-general Datuk Sebastian Ting was shocked at the number of stateless people waiting to be registered.
He said the statelessness problem was much worse than the state government anticipated.
Ting said he was preparing a report for the higher-ups in the state government and Putrajaya to see how policymakers could be more effective and thorough in reaching stateless people.
On July 24, the special joint committee on citizenship registration for Sarawak’s stateless formed by the state and federal governments was told to be more aggressive to find those in rural Sarawak without birth certificates or identity cards.
Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said more NRD mobile units must be deployed in remote areas.
There are 6,000 longhouses and scattered villages in the interior of Sarawak, a state as vast as Peninsular Malaysia. Many of the state’s rural settlements are not linked by road. – The Vibes, December 9, 2023.
