I wish I could go back to school, says stateless boy
SUNGAI PETANI: No words could describe how happy these three siblings were the moment they saw their schoolmates upon setting foot at SK Sungai Layar here.
The joy in their eyes tell the whole story about how Nurul Solehah Abdullah, 9, and her two brothers, Mohamad Kabir, 10, and Mohd Haikal Alif, 11, have been missing their friends after parting ways more than a year ago.
During their reunion, the siblings were questioned on where they had been and why they had left the school.
“When I was here, we used to play in the school field, so when I left, they no longer played there. They said they had been bored since I left,” said Nurul Solehah when asked on what she spoke about with her two classmates.
The girl told her friends that she had moved to a new school.
Her two brothers too, could not wait to be back at school as they missed classes and their friends.
“I wish I could go back at school soon because I want to study hard and make new friends,” said Haikal.
However, the three could not explain why they could not resume schooling once after completing their 2016 school term at SK Sungai Layar.
The reality is that they do not qualify as students because the three, as well as their three older brothers, Mohamad Shukri Abdullah, 17, Mohamad Shafiq, 15, Mohamad Anwar, 14, are not Malaysian citizens.
The siblings’ predicament began when their father, a Malaysian, married an Indonesian woman in southern Thailand almost 20 years ago.
Since their mother did not have any travel documents when they married, their father did not register the marriage with the religious office in Perlis until the six siblings had grown up.
Fate took a painful turn when their father abandoned them in 2015. Things became complicated when their mother left home not long after that, leaving them to fend for themselves.
“Since our mother left us, I worked at a coffee shop near our home. I earned RM15 daily and I supported my siblings,” Shukri said.
Concerned over the safety of his siblings when he left them to go to work, Shukri decided to seek help from his uncle, Ahmad Meera Hussain.
Meera took them under his care and they have since been living in his home.
Meera said he was shocked to learn that none of them had birth certificates and thus could not go to school.
“With the help of Tanjung Dawai assemblyman Datuk Tajul Urus Mat Zain (state Education Committee chairman) and the state Education Department, I managed to enrol my nephews and niece in SK Sungai Layar and SMK Sungai Layar in early 2016,” said the father of five.
However, the children’s joy of being able to study lasted only a year. When they received their birth certificates from the National Registration Department, it stated that they were not Malaysian citizens.
Meera said he tried everything so that the children could resume schooling, but to no avail.
The state government estimates that there are around 30,000 stateless children in the state as a result of their parents’ failure to register their marriage with the local authorities after getting married across the border.