KUCHING : SUPP Women Central Chairman, Kho Teck Wan calls for speedy approval of permanent residency and citizenship application in Sarawak as there is a high rate of stateless children born without birth certificate due to adoption and unmarried parent in rural areas.
“I had helped with few adoption applications of foreign and stateless children, and understand the pain of parents who suffered years of waiting for these cases to be processed and approved.” said Kho.
Currently the foreign spouse can only apply for permanent resident status after 10 years of first coming to Sarawak after marriage. Many foreign spouses faced difficult hurdles to stay in Sarawak as a permanent resident.
For Malaysian civil servants posted to Sarawak, the time they serve in the civil service is not taken into consideration for the 10-year requirement. It means he or she can only start to count the 10 years when he or she resigns from the civil service.
This has forced professionals such as doctors in public service facing such predicament to either return to West Malaysia or Sabah or resign from public service and work in the private sector. Many permanent res ident applicants are talented and well qualified people. Sarawak should consider absorbing them in our talent pool to help develop the state.
She pointed out that the latest news spreading in the social media is the speed of the approval granted to a spouse and children of prominent figure. This is indeed good news for foreign spouses and children if this case can be adopted for all applicants.
SUPP Women Central is fully supportive of granting permanent residents and citizenship status to qualified and law abiding foreigners and children who fulfilled the conditions. More importantly, SUPP Women Central calls for the period to be shortened and the process speed up.
