POKOK SENA, Aug 26 — Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail today dismissed allegations that his ministry is in the process of granting Malaysian citizenship on a large scale to foreigners, especially from China.

Without elaborating on the allegations, Saifuddin Nasution described them as terrible accusations without a sense of responsibility, which had an impact on the ministry’s efforts to resolve the current citizenship application issue.

"This is what we are doing and it is not easy, because this issue of citizenship is highly sensitive, but I reject completely the accusation that this is a process of granting citizenship to foreigners, especially from China.

"Give us the space to resolve the issue of the future of children from Malaysian families whose marriage registration process is not done accordingly, and now there are several problems, and we want to help,” he said.

He said this to reporters after presenting a donation for the purchase of a hearse to Ar-Raudhah Mosque, Sungai Durian here today.

At the event, Saifuddin Nasution also presented the citizenship application approval letter to Khatanak Sayyan, 19, who previously had no identity document since birth.

Commenting further, Saifuddin Nasution said that there were more than 140,000 citizenship applications received by his ministry, of which 9,000 had been processed, including applications that had been approved.

He added that if the data related to the granting of citizenship is twisted and disseminated, it could give a negative perception of his ministry’s efforts to resolve citizenship issues, including many which were caused by delays in marriage registration.

"There were various reasons for this; sometimes parents fail to immediately register a marriage, while in the case of citizenship, the important prerequisite document is the marriage certificate. When there is a lack of that, over time, problems arise for the children.

"So, when they (parents) try to correct that, they submit the application and it takes a long time (to be processed), in this case, 19 years, but there are 20 years, 15 years is normal, also 12 years. So that’s what I said, that the purpose of granting, simplifying the approval for a case such as this, Malaysian parents and children were born here,” he said.

Previously, the National Registration Department (NRD) was reported to have denied claims that about 54,000 Chinese nationals are in the process of being granted Malaysian citizenship, supposedly to become DAP voters. — Bernama