She could not even tell the authorities her family contact since she apparently ran away from home. So they thought she was an illegal foreigner and was scheduled to be deported. Luckily for her, a young lawyer took up her case, tracked down her old school and managed to get her MyKad number to prove she was a Malaysian. She was released after months in jail.

While the story above raised many questions about how the authorities conduct the search for illegal immigrants in the country, a bigger concern is the number of "missing" Malaysians, i.e. Malaysians who do not posses a MyKad.

There is little doubt the biggest community with this problem is the Indian community, and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak.  The latest estimate suggests that there are at least 40,000 "missing" Indian Malaysians while there are no figures for those from Sabah and Sarawak.  It is quite unbelievable that this can happen in a country where we have a multimedia super corridor and where most government departments are wired up.

How did this happen in the first place? The short answer goes like this. In the old days, many Indians lived in the estates where they would undergo a traditional marriage. Since the whole village knew about the marriage, it was never registered. When a child was born, forget the birth certificate, since you needed a marriage certificate in order to get the birth certificate.  So these children grew up without a Mykad. But since they grew up in the estates where everyone knows everyone else, there was no real need for a MyKad.

In the past decade, many of these Indians moved into urban areas when they were removed from the estates. Now living in the urban areas, they realised that they could not live a normal life without a MyKad. In Malaysia, you really need a Mykad to do most things, for example, open a bank account, enrol in a school, visit a clinic, get a job, etc. You are a non-person in Malaysia if you do not have a MyKad.

So what is the problem? Why don't they go to the NRD and apply for a Mykad? The problem is there are many conditions that need to be fulfilled before they will issue you a MyKad. You need your parent's marriage certificate, for one. By now, some of the parents have been separated and the applicant is no longer in contact with them. The NRD also requires all your siblings to certify that you are a family member. What if you are not on good terms with your brother or sister? The way it works in the NRD, if you do not fulfil any one of the conditions, they will not issue a MyKad. They do not reject, they just do not issue the MyKad.

In Sabah and Sarawak, the problem is straightforward. Those living in the interior obviously cannot register marriages and births since there is no NRD for miles around. The only solution is for mobile teams to visit the interior, take down their details, and issue MyKads. The NRD has been doing it for the past decade but the problem persists.

It is as if red tape has gone mad. The most obvious solution is for the NRD to accept that if an application can fulfil 80 to 90 per cent of the paperwork requirements, it should be enough to issue the MyKad.

We really must deal with this issue as it is a basic right for citizens of this country to have a piece of identity. We cannot have a situation like we had last week where an Indian man had to take his entire family to see a Sultan to get a letter so that the NRD will issue him a MyKad.  Can you imagine what it would be like to have 40,000 Indians visiting the royal households all looking for a letter?

If there is a problem with the system and red tape, then change the system or red tape, not force people to comply with red tape that is obviously impossible to fulfil.