10 New Service Centers to Come Up for Indian Community in Malaysia

The Malaysian government is planning to set up 10 more Special Implementation Taskforce on Indian Community (SITF) service centers in the country to settle issues related to the Indian community more quickly and effectively. The SITF looks into issues such as those related to identity card, birth certificate, citizenship, job opportunities, welfare, education, health, housing and loan matters of the community members.

Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) president Dr S Subramanium said that since Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has taken over the administration of the country, he has carried out several efforts to resolve the issues the Indian community often faces, especially with the establishment of SITF. One of the problems that saw resolution was the issue of citizenship, with 7,000 applications getting cleared and another 4,000 applications in the process.

“The government created these service centers as a link between government agencies and the people at the grassroots level so that we could assist them solve the problems they are facing,” he was quoted as saying by the Sun Daily.

“Looking at the experience throughout the country, many cases referred to SITF were those in need of assistance in education, welfare, medical aid and citizenship,” he said after opening the SITF service center at Taman Sentosa on Feb. 8. The center is first in Pahang state and the 11th center in the country so far, set up under the Cabinet Committee on the Indian Community under the Prime Minister’s Department. Subramanium added that 10 new SITF centers will be established in areas with high concentration of the Indian diaspora.

The ceremony was attended by of Pahang State MIC chairman R Goonasakaren and State Health, Human Resources and Special Duties Committee chairman Norol Azali Sulaiman.

“Apart from assisting the people, SITF also has the role of raising the knowledge of the Indian community on their responsibilities as citizens as we found many problems in the community were due to their lack knowledge on their responsibilities.” he said at the event.

He went on: “For example, the issue of the birth certificate was due to parents who did not register the birth of their children and when the issue of schooling arose, we found in some cases the couples did not register their marriage. In this regard, we would like to educate and provide information on the matter so that there would be no problems in future.”