The detention of National Registration Department officials who were involved in the sale of MyKad under the ISA is certainly an inadequate punishment.

Judging by the number of Indonesians permanent residents who commit crimes here, it is quite apparent that the sale of Malaysian identity documents has been going on for a long time.

It seems a paradox that highly-qualified foreign spouses of Malaysians are unable to get a permanent residency while Indonesians labourers and construction workers seem to have no problem getting citizenship!

It is interesting to note that in their pursuit of buying citizenship and permanent residence status, most Indonesians have resorted to crime in order to come up with the money to purchase these documents from corrupt officials.

This has indirectly contributed to the rise in crimes committed by foreign nationals. With this in mind, it would be correct to say that the unscrupulous officials who sold the MyKads to the Indonesians were partly responsible for the surge in the country's crime index.

These NRD officials should be hauled to court and if found guilty, put away for along time. What they did - in the words of our prime minister himself - was 'unpardonable'.

Their imprisonment should be a lesson to all civil servants that they should not treat their positions as an opportunity to make a quick buck and certainly not to extent of selling our citizenship to foreigners.