KUCHING: The Education Ministry must expedite the process to get children in Sarawak, who have not been able to go to school due to citizenship document issues, to resume their stunted education, Senator Abun Sui said today.
He was reacting to the assurance given by Prime Minister and PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim at a special meeting with members the Sarawak leadership council while here for a one-day working visit yesterday.
Abun said the process to get these "stateless" children — normally those born in rural and remote areas of the state and whose birth are no registered due to the difficulty to get to government offices — "must be streamlined at all levels".
At the meeting, Abun, in a post on Facebook, stated Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek as saying that the "Madani government is striving to enable indigenous children in Sarawak who do not have Malaysian citizenship documents to attend school".
The PKR Sarawak information chief said the directive on getting these stateless children back to school "needed to be detailed immediately to prevent these children from being left behind".
"The Home Affairs Ministry, through the National Registration Department, also needs to promptly address the documentation issues of these children throughout Sarawak."