KUCHING (April 9): Selangau MP Baru Bian has called for speedy negotiations on the Malaysian Agreement 1963 (MA63) in terms of Sarawak’s autonomy over education matters so as to allow undocumented Sarawakian children attend public schools in the state.
He said with such autonomy, the state government would have the prerogative or discretion to allow undocumented, or ‘stateless’, children attend public schools, subject to some payment of special fees.
“Sarawakians are asking how much longer the negotiations are going to take – in Sarawak, there are many children who are being denied access to education because of various issues mainly to do with citizenship.
“The longer the negotiations take, the longer these stateless children have to wait until they are allowed to return to school without being imposed with high school fees, or worse still, lose out on schooling altogether,” he said in a statement today.
Baru said this in response to the remarks made by Deputy Minister in Premier of Sarawak’s Department (Law, MA63 and State-Federal Relations) Datuk Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali, who had said that negotiations between the state government and Putrajaya were ongoing, but the decisions had yet to be made.
Baru regarded such a statement as ‘very disappointing’ for Sarawakians as the negotiations had been going on for a very long time, without any update or conclusion.
“The Pakatan Harapan (PH), in the 22 months they were in the federal government, had managed to resolve 17 out of 21 issues that were put up for negotiations.
“However, the subsequent Perikatan Nasional (PN) and Barisan Nasional (BN)-led governments have made little progress on these outstanding matters,” he pointed out.
On the long-standing issues faced by stateless Sarawakians, Baru said these issues could only be resolved when the state had some autonomous rights over the functions of the Home Ministry.
The task of investigating and deciding on the status of stateless people should rightly fall upon Sarawakians as they would know the problems and the backgrounds of the people, he added.
“The civil servants in Putrajaya are too far removed from the realities faced by our people, especially the rural population, to be able to understand and empathise with them.
“There is, therefore, no sense of urgency to resolve the citizenship issues faced by the stateless folks. Strong cases in point are the stateless and elderly former border scouts in Lawas who have waited a lifetime to be recognised as Malaysians.
“I had proposed previously that four ministries, or parts of the functions of these ministries, be devolved to Sarawak i.e. education, health, infrastructure under the Works Ministry, and parts of the (functions of) Home Ministry.
“With the devolvement, Sarawak would also be able to decide on our own educational policies and the priorities of our infrastructure programme, such as our road infrastructure, which is far behind those in Peninsular Malaysia,” he said.
Adding on, Baru also called for transparency regarding the discussions pertaining to MA63 negotiations, and making these findings public.
In this respect, he said every Sarawakian owned a stake in the outcome of these negotiations and thus, they deserved to be informed about the progress.
“The Deputy Minister (Sharifah Hasidah) has been talking about this MA63 issue for five years.
“A special delegation went to London in 2017 to look into the Agreement and to this day, they are still engaged in negotiations – ‘with too many issues that need to be discussed’.
“The Sarawak government needs to be transparent about these discussions and disclose to the people what transpired during the meetings,” he stressed.
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