Prioritise issuance of identification documents for stateless children — union
SIBU: Sarawak Teachers Union (STU) is urging the government to prioritise the issuance of identification documents such as birth certificates and identity cards to local indigenous children without any proper documentation.
Newly minted president of STU, Macky Joseph, reckons it is pivotal that their status as Malaysian citizens be recognised, not just to enable them to be enrolled in schools.
He was responding to Deputy Minister of Education Teo Nie Ching’s recent disclosure that stateless children in the country would now have the opportunity to be enrolled in national schools starting from the new school year next January.
Teo had said with the new development, stateless children would now be able to be enrolled up to secondary schools in the future by merely producing their birth certificates even if they have not been granted citizenship.
On this, Macky described the move to allow stateless children to be enrolled in schools as commendable.
“Therefore, STU welcomes the move as mentioned by Deputy Minister of Education Teo Nie Ching that stateless children be enrolled into the country’s education system by simplifying the registration process for these children so that they can receive formal education. It is high time that we recognise education as a basic human right.
“However, STU would like the government to prioritise the issuance of identification documents such as birth certificates and identity cards to our local indigenous children who are without any proper documentation. Enabling them to be enrolled into schools is just a temporary solution. Their status as citizens of Malaysia should be recognised through identification documents,” he told The Borneo Post when contacted yesterday.
Thus, it is necessary for the Ministry of Education to work with the National Registration Department (NRD) on the issue, he suggested.
“This is because the system for registration of students in schools (Students Database Application or APDM) is linked with the database from NRD. For now, stateless children do not exist in the NRD database, thus could not be registered into APDM.
“These children would not be able to sit for national exams such as UPSR because the exam registration system uses data from APDM.”
He mentioned a case where a Primary 6 pupil could not sit for UPSR because he did not have the documents.
Macky said he learned that the boy’s parents did not register their marriage, were working in other districts - had now separated, thus could not be certified by the village head, and the boy was currently under the care of his relatives.
“They could not produce his clinic card, thus NRD could not register him. Therefore, to resolve the issue of registering our local children without proper documentation, there must be an alternative pathway to register them into the APDM.”
He suggested that the NRD help with the documentation of these stateless children so that they would not remain stateless for life and that there must be a standard procedure in place to avoid miscommunication between the schools and the parents of stateless children.
However, he said the process must not be open to abuse by certain parties such as illegal immigrants.
“For example, it is not too difficult for parents from foreign countries to enter Malaysia by crossing the border illegally; we do not want them to bring their children over here and claim that they are stateless children, and demand that they be registered in our schools.
“What we want is education for our local children without encouraging an influx of illegal immigrants. We also do not want illegal immigrants to see this as an opportunity to gain citizenship into our country. We’ll want to safeguard our borders, and not be taken advantage of,” he said.
“With the move, we will also expect a larger enrolment of students into our schools next year.
“Therefore, schools must be provided with sufficient textbooks, tables, chairs and other facilities to cater to all students, including the stateless children. We do not want the quantity of students to compromise on the quality of our education,” he added.
He hopes the details of implementation are ironed out before school reopens next year.