2010/02/02
By S. Ista Kyra

IPOH: The Home Ministry has simplified the Bahasa Malay-sia interview for citizenship applications to make it easier on the elderly.
"This will give the elderly and less educated applicants a chance to get their citizenship approved," Datuk Lau Yeng Peng, special officer to Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, said yesterday.

Lau was referring to applicants who fulfilled the basic criteria for citizenship, but were uneducated and there-fore tended to fail the language test.

"The questions are too complicated for some applicants, especially those who have not received a formal education.

"That is why we have now designed the interview to resemble a chit-chat in Bahasa Malaysia.

"If they can converse sufficiently, the applicants will be successful in their interview," Lau said after a meeting with Perak Gerakan liaison committee members on problems related to applications for citizenship yesterday.

Present was Gerakan de-puty president Datuk Chang Ko Youn.

Applicants for citizenship are required to go through a number of steps at the National Registration Department, one of which is to attend an interview in Bahasa Malaysia.

Previously, the interview also contained questions which tested the applicant's grasp of Bahasa Malaysia as well as his general knowledge of Malay-sia.
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Lau reiterated the minister's advice to people to deal directly with the National Registration Department on citizenship applications instead of turning to middlemen or agents.

"There have been cases where applicants were cheated of large sums of money by these intermediaries."

He said he would propose to the ministry to consider providing a more detailed explanation for applications that were rejected. The ministry has cleared 10 years of backlog in citizenship applications two months ahead of schedule. All cases filed between 1997 and 2006 have been processed.

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