KOTA MARUDU, July 25 (Bernama) -- The National Registration Department (NRD) and the office of the member of Parliament of Kota Marudu will conduct a special registration exercise from Monday to assist rural villagers to obtain birth certificates and identity cards.

The two-day mobile exercise will be held in Kampung Damai in Tandek and Kampung Melangkap in Marak Parak.

Up until now, more than 10,000 paperless natives of Kota Marudu constituency have received their birth certificates and identity cards, with the help of the Kota Marudu MP Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili.

Ongkili said this would be the eighth series of exercise conducted by the MP Office and the NRD, which began in 2002.

The Science, Technology and Innovation Minister said the current joint exercise had identified several villagers living at the lowland, coastal and highland areas, who had yet to obtain their documents due to their remote location and inaccessibility.

"Hence, the special exercise brings to them the services of the NRD to ease their registration. Without these documents they and their children would face many problems in life including having their citizenship questioned," he said here Sunday.

He said that the continuing effort by the NRD and the MP Office was to assist the natives obtain their documents, hence resolving their citizenship problem.

Ongkili said he had spent RM300,000 of his MP allocation for the exercises to address the woes of undocumented villagers and their children who would otherwise live in a quandary over their identities.