A 19-year-old Malaysian esports athlete has been forced to miss out on participating in a Southeast Asian regional tournament due to the fact that he is stateless and without an identity card of his own.

AROV Esports (AROV) team manager Danial Rusli revealed (via Malay Mail) that Muhammad Aiman Hafizi Ahmad (second from the right in the featured image of this article) was supposed to attend the PUBG Mobile Club Open (PMCO) 2019 South East Asia league competition in September.

The tournament is slated to take place in Shanghai, China, from 15 September to 10 October 2019, which is the reason why young Muhammad Aiman needs to have a valid passport to travel there.

However, since he doesn’t have an identity card, he was unable to apply for a passport. The only piece of formal documentation he owns is a copy of his birth certificate, which makes it difficult to get help from the relevant authorities.

Speaking with What’s The Meta, Danial also said that they have already contacted the authorities but apparently was told by an officer that processing and solving the issue would ridiculously take between three to five years.

This isn’t the first occasion that Muhammad Aiman had to miss out on an esports competition, as he also had to cancel his participation as part of team AROV in the Spring Split league in Shanghai earlier in July 2019.

Both the Youth and Sports Minister and Deputy Minister, Syed Saddiq and Steven Sim respectively, have since responded to the issue on Twitter replies to the original news post by What’s The Meta.

Sim promised that “his office” will contact the affected parties (Danial and Muhammad Aiman). Meanwhile, Saddiq says that “this shouldn’t happen” and tagged those working under him (@luqmanlong and @Amshar_Aziz), telling them to contact and assist the aggrieved parties (Danial and Muhammad Aiman).

My office will contact you…

— Steven Sim (@scheekeong) August 30, 2019

Ini tidak sepatutnya berlaku.
Tolong hubungi dan bantu @luqmanlong / @Amshar_Aziz . https://t.co/hYiNhUUGCH

— Syed Saddiq (@SyedSaddiq) August 30, 2019

It remains to be seen if and when this matter will be resolved. Matters of individual documentation and citizenship issues belong under the purview of the Ministry Of Home Affairs in Malaysia. They’re responsible for handling the issue at hand.

(Image Credit: Boyka Gaming/Facebook)