Malaysia's National Registration Department (NRD) will deploy more mobile units next month to serve people living in the inland areas of Sarawak State in East Malaysia.
The state's NRD director Abu Bakar Mat said at Kuching, state capital of Sarawak, on Wednesday that the initiative was aimed at resolving problems
faced by the locals in securing identity documents.
According to Abu Bakar, the mobile units were first used by the Sarawak NRD in 2004 and the increase of such units beginning February this year was an extension to the still-in-use service.
The Star, a local daily, recently revealed that at least 66,000 people in Sarawak State had no birth certificantes and/ or identity cards, and were regarded as stateless or undocumented.
The disclosed figure surpassed the previous estimate of about 35,000.
Given the geographical nature of Sarawak State, increasing the mobile units was vital since many areas in the state were not accessible by roads, said Abu Bakar.
Meanwhile, to make it easy for people to come forward to register themselves, Abu Bakar said the NRD counters at Kuching operate seven days a
week while those at Miri, another city in the state, are open six days a week.
He also hoped that such services would be extended to other cities in the state.