GEORGE TOWN – The National Registration Department (NRD) has warned the public to stay away from parties claiming to be agents empowered to deal with affairs related to the department.
There are no such agents appointed or sanctioned by NRD, its director-general Datuk Ruslin Jusoh said.
He said this in revealing that there were several cases of people getting duped by scammers who posed as agents and promised to settle issues related to the issuance of Mykads.
Most of the cases were detected in the urban areas, with the victims facing problems in registering for the Mykad (national identity card) because of social circumstances such as having been born out of wedlock.
“We detected that the agents would demand payment of between RM3,000 and RM5,000 to settle the cases. But they then disappeared after the payments were made,” Ruslin said.
Ruslin said NRD is committed to helping all citizens settle their woes with the department, but they must come in person or deal directly with their officers.
He assured that the department does not discriminate and will assist all such problematic cases, including children born out of wedlock.
There are currently 225 NRD offices in the country, including those operating at the Urban Transformation Centres.
He also urged people to register for birth certificates of their newborns within 60 days from the date of birth to avoid any complications.
“If they register late, the department must investigate the reason for it. It then becomes a complicated process to obtain the birth certificates,” he said.
Earlier, Ruslin presented a Mykad to Alliamah Ramasamy, 64, who is finally getting her identity card after several years of appealing.
Her six other siblings all have Mykads whereas her parents, who are both Malaysians, are deceased.
The grandmother could not receive her Mykad before because her necessary documents were destroyed in a fire when she was just a toddler.
Born in Liberty Wood Estate in Kulim, Kedah, the NRD in Perak, Kedah, and Penang combed their resources together, interviewed her siblings who are living, and asked her to undergo a DNA test to determine that she is related to them.
Alliamah could not receive the benefits of citizenship such as welfare aid because her citizenship status was under scrutiny for decades until now.
Finally, on this auspicious day, an emotional Alliamah became a bona fide Malaysian citizen with her own Mykad, which was handed to her by Ruslin and witnessed by her son as well as state NRD director Nurzulfa Ibrahim. – The Vibes, July 29, 2022