Everything you might want to know about Malaysian Citizenship Renunciation, or Minor Oath Taking

In my bid to become a kinder and more helpful individual come year 2011, I've decided to document my experience of the loooooong process of Minor Oath taking in gory detail, so as to serve as an info guide to help out anyone at all who happens to be googling desperately just like i did a month ago. Cuz I can understand how it is like to be clueless and unmotivated, help from veterans surely does help.

Anyway, amongst all the lucky Singaporeans, there are people like me - who are Singaporeans by registration. Although I may have been born in Singapore, by law, I had to follow the citizenship of my parents, who were then still Malaysians. It was only when I was about 7 or 8 when my parents decided to renounce their Malaysian citizenships and become full fledge Singaporeans. To cut the story short, although I had already renounced my M'sian citizenship back then together with my parents, being a minor, I guess it wasnt really counted as official. So now, at 21, I had to re-renounce (heh) my Msian citizenship, as well as to confirm my loyalty and pledge my allegiance to Singapore. We have a year to do so btw, and normally I would have done some serious last minute work but because my passport had expired and you couldn't renew your passport without taking the oath, I was forced to do everything up early in order to get it ready to book tickets for my grad trip (YAY).

Disclaimer: Information applicable as at Jan2011. It may change as time goes by....

Step 1: Renouncing your Msian citizenship!!! (i.e. Doing up what they call Borang/Form K)

Documents needed:
(please see http://www.kln.gov.my/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=245759&folderId=573173&name=DLFE-6212.htm)

ALL requires original plus 2 photocopies
i. Letter of approval from the Singapore Registrar of Citizens and ICA (i.e. the letter they mailed you to tell you to take the oath)
ii. Malaysian identity card (if any)
iii. Singapore pink/blue identity card
iv. Malaysian Restricted and International passport(including expired & cancelled passports)
v. Malaysia/Singapore birth certificate
vi. Borang W (i.e. Msian citizenship cert if you are holding singapore birth cert)
vii. Two photographs + 10SGD fee
viii. Some renunciation letter you received if you had renounced ur Msian citizenship previously. But somehow I didn't have that letter and I insisted I couldnt produce it. Thankfully the person let me off the hook, phew. Would be good to bring it.

please see the link above for full info. It says that you need photocopies of some of your parent's essential documents as well. But somehow....they didn't ask me for it. So I guess there isn't a real need..... But you'll never know right, so it would be good to have it ready first. Photocopying services there at the embassy rips people off by the way!!! 20cents (or was it 40??) per piece, are you kidding me? Okay, so armed with all your documents, you may stroll down to the Malaysian Embassy located at Jervois Road (you can take bus 32 from the nearest busstop you see when you exit redhill mrt station) to get it all done up! Contrary to some of the older information I had read in the blogs when I was doing research, the efficiency at the embassy is surprisingly good. So good in fact. haha

1) There's no need to schedule appointments at all! Apparently you had to do so last time just to submit your forms but it is really so efficient now you can definitely do so on the same day. I didn't even see the need to go down EXTREMELY early at the opening hour... Just be there early enough in order to fill up and submit all the forms by 11am. Filling up of forms should take you about an hour or so..

2) After submission, you'll pay your 10SGD processing fee, and after which they would issue you a collection slip to tell you to return to the embassy - I think 3 working days later, to collect your renunciation memo, which is basically an application-in-progress letter to let ICA know that you have submitted an application for renunciation, but the process hasnt been completed yet. Cuz the whole process takes about a year, they will only mail you the original Form K in a year's time if I'm not wrong. Anyway, note that collection time is only between 2:30pm and 3:30pm. This memo is very important because you gotta bring it to take your oath. =)

Step 2: Halfway there - Oath taking!!!!!!

The oath taking process is definitely much more straightforward and don't require much explanation. With your renunciation memo at hand you can once again take a leisurely stroll to ICA for oath taking. Bring along your IC, Singapore Citizenship Cert and the oath form as well. Just head up to 6th level and get a queue number for Oath taking. Before you know it, you are already a true blue Singaporean.


Step 3: Renew your passport!!!!!!

After oath taking you can just head down to the ICA lobby area at level one to remake your passport. Submit an application the usual way, just remember to attach a photocopy of your Singaporean citizenship Cert (front and back) to the back of the passport app form, because they will attach some documentary proof of your oath taking on ur citizenship cert. so yeah... patiently await for the passport collection slip to be mailed to you - mine did yesterday and I will be collecting my passport tomorrow! yahooo..

Haha, so as you can see, the whole process seriously doesn't take very long. Getting everything done within 2 weeks is definitely a possibility. Mine took slightly longer - all in about 3 weeks cuz of all the chinese new year fuss and also because I could only go down on wednesdays due to classes... But yea, moral of the story is, DONT PROCRASTINATE!!!!

Don't miss your oath taking because if you don't do so within a year you WILL lose your SG citizenship. No such thing as rescheduling another oath date I can guarantee you that. So don't sit around too long, get it done!