JULY 11 at JPN

This was a day to be remembered:
July 11th 2006 - the day I went to the National Registration Department (Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara) to have my "race" changed from "Chinese" to what I really am.....

How on earth could they make a mistake like that? I brought my birth certificate as proof. What I learned was interesting and horrible.

"Your original record says you are Chinese sir" said the lady. How could that be, since my original (pre-MYKAD) i.c. listed my race correctly?
"Well, I am looking at your original record in the system, and it says you are Chinese. Before MYKAD, changes to your status were sometimes not updated into the system." Now how would a person be able to change his RACE to something else? And can you not see it written CLEARLY on my birth certificate what race I am?

She took my application and my Birth Certificate into a room, and came out a few minutes later - I believe this was to get approval from an officer to waive the RM10.00 charge for making changes to your MYKAD.

After me, 2 sisters were trying to change their religion from Buddhist to Christian. One had a certificate of baptism dating from 1 month after her birth. They said their parents were both Christian, and they both had been baptised within months of birth.

"Your original record says you are Buddhist. We will always follow your parents religion, and since you are Chinese you must be Buddhist." No, the sisters said, our parents were always Christian.
"Your registration was when you were still a baby - how can you know if your parents were Buddhist or someting else?"
I was so shocked at this senseless statement I had to pay attention. As it turned out, the sisters were asked to pay RM10 each for the change in MYKAD information. The JPN staff refused to accept that it was their error. If the sisters insisted, they would have to wait for "the officer". Where was this officer?
"He is attending a tribunal now. You can't expect him to come out to handle your problem. He maybe will be finished at 12 noon (thats in 2.5 hours). Otherwise, you have to pay the RM10."

I only escaped paying a penalty because I had a government document, my birth certificate, as proof. These ladies had a church certificate dating back to 196x and it was not accepted. The JPN has stated in the newspaprers that citizens need not pay the fee if the error is the fault of the JPN. But note well: your birth certificate does not document your religion. For all those with a wrong religion in their MYKAD (a church I know recorded about 30% of its people having MYKAD errors), a penalty will still be extracted, because JPN will not recognise your other documents.

Still worse: the counter staff insisted to both me and the 2 sisters that the MYKAD followed the original record. And yet, our old (pre-MYKAD) I.C. had no errors. This means that the JPN data was wrong from the point where it was converted from paper documents into computer records. Judging from the experience of the church I mentioned earlier, this means that for non Malays, we may have 30% of the population with MYKAD errors.

And another thing: If JPN was going to ignore everything we wrote in the form when we applied for our MYKAD, then why have a form at all? Why should we give the correct information, and still be provided with wrong information in our MYKAD? Was it so that people would believe that they were being given what they had written down?

The JPN office I was in had a machine in the corner that could read the MYKAD. Good, I thought, it helps people check the contents. But when I tried it, it only showed a scanned image of my MYKAD, not the encoded information or religion and race that is not printed on the card. This is not only useless, it borders on criminal negligence - giving citizens the impression that all is well, but hiding the information that might be (and for 30% of us, may well be) wrong.

JPN should change its operations IMMEDIATELY, and accept proof provided by citizens about their race and religion. JPN must establish a process to print ALL details of a MYKAD and provided them to the citizen at the point of collection of their MYKAD.
Our schools must STOP teaching this crap that a person's racr automatically fixes their religion. I have met children who have been told as much: an Indian is a Hindu, a Chinese is a Buddhist, a Malay is a Muslim. I dont know what the 'others' end up as; Christian I suppose. What about Ceylonese Buddhists? Chinese Taoists / Christians / Muslims? Ah - becoming a Muslim is "masuk Melayu". Wrong! And we must get that phrase out of our language. It says nothing that is true.