Party vice president Surendran leads seven children in a protest at the Education Ministry.
PUTRAJAYA:
PKR today urged the Education Ministry to work with the National
Registration Department to ensure that children without acceptable
citizenship documents are allowed to enrol in schools.
PKR vice president N Surendran said these “stateless students” were
not at fault for their condition of being without birth certificates,
MyKads or other documents attesting to their Malaysian citizenship.
“The government should take action and not try to pass the buck to
the opposition,” he said today after leading a protest at the Education
Ministry in Putrajaya. He was accompanied by seven stateless students.
The seven, ranging in age from seven to 14, were not able to pursue
their education because they had no proper documentation, Surendran
said.
Five of them are orphans. Of the other two, one was not allowed to
enrol in Standard One because his birth certificate was incomplete. Both
his parents are Malaysians with valid MyKads.
Surendran claimed that in Peninsular Malaysia alone, about 49,000 children were deprived of education for being stateless.
“Sabah and Sarawak would definitely add to the statistics,” he said.
More than an hour after Surendran and the children had waited for
them, Education Ministry officials emerged from their offices and said
they were willing to help the children register as students so that they
could start their schooling as soon as possible.
However, there were two conditions imposed: either parent of each of
the children has to be a Malaysian, and a village head must verify this
in writing.
“Once
these conditions are fulfilled, they can start schooling,” said Roziah
Abdullah, the ministry’s deputy director of schools management.
Earlier, patience ran thin and tempers flared when no one from the
ministry appeared bothered to meet Surendran and the children.
Their request to meet Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was also
turned down. They were told that all ministry officials were attending a
briefing session at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre.
Later, speaking to the media, Surendran urged Muhyiddin to take responsibility for the misery of stateless students.
“It is a crisis situation in the education of these children,” he said. “It is a national education crisis.”
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