Stateless children must not be turned away — Fatimah

KUCHING: Stateless children must be allowed to go to school and that they must not be turned away following the recent announcement of the Education Ministry.

Minister of Welfare, Community Well Being, Women, Family, and Childhood Development Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah lauded the move, saying the focus was to bring in the stateless children to school.

“It is the right of children to get education and we want to remind parents of our responsibility towards children that they must be registered and be given birth certificates.

“We know their (children) predicaments. A child, for example, may be born to a Malaysian father and an Indonesian mother, and because their marriage is not recognised or the child born out of wedlock, the child would face the consequence of not being given nationality of either country.

“Such children would drop out of school earlier because of the nationality issue, or because of poverty their parents can afford to send them to education centres run by volunteers.

“We encourage parents who have children who are in the midst of applying for their nationality to send their children to these organisations such as D’Wira Educational Association here,” says Fatimah when met during her working visit to the centre (D’Wira Educational Association) at Swee Joo Park in Sky Garden here, yesterday.

The volunteers-run centre allows children between three and 21 years old, who are in the midst of applying for their nationality or have no proper identity documents to register at school for two transition years prior to their problem being solved.

“Once the children have their documents approved, they can go to school without worrying being left behind in their studies,” she said, adding that the syllabus used in the centre was similar with the education system of this country.

D’Wira Educational Association has 7 teachers looking after children from pre-school to secondary school level. About half of the 110 students are still waiting for their nationality status to be approved.

The association is operated by coordinator/manager, Jap Siew Moi, who helps the children with their education and also assists them to liase with the National Registration Department (NRD) and Sarawak Education Department to get their documents done.

Prior to moving to Swee Joo Park, D’Wira Educational Association has been around for the last 10 years at Desa Wira, Batu Kawa.

Officials from the national Registration Department and Sarawak Education Department were among those who accompanied Fatimah during the visit.

Meanwhile, Jap said they had so far not asked for any government grants to run the centre although they are looking at expanding their operation – to acquire a single-storey house to add to their present bungalow – in order to give vocational training to older children, like cooking, computer classes and others.

“It would be nice if somebody can do some landscaping work for us because we don’t have enough manpower to do it. As for teachers, we have enough for the time being, but if more children come in, then we might need some more teachers,” she said.

She added that the centre had helped to register three of their students going to normal school upon receiving confirmation of their documents from the relevant authorities.

“We encourage parents whose children are without nationality/ citizenship status, to send them to us, so that we can help them in their studies and to assist them (parents) get their nationality and citizenship approved,” she said.