Impoverished Penan villagers in middle and upper Baram have toldMalaysiakini that teachers in the secondary schools of Long Lama and Long San demand cash from students at the beginning of each school term.
The Penan parents say their children face threats that they would not be able to continue their studies if they do not pay.
Parents in several villages spoke of being made to contribute to a ‘Welfare Fund’, with no adequate receipts provided.
Two Long Lama receipts kept by parents in Long Pakan, dated Jan 2 and 3 this year, were made out for the sums of RM20 and RM27 respectively, but the signatures were unintelligible.
One had no receipt number and the other had a number scribbled on by hand. The payments described on the receipts were for the ‘Hostel Welfare Fund’. A similar receipt from Long San secondary school was given to a parent from Ba Abang.
“One female teacher in Long Lama asked for RM100. Then she said RM80, then she negotiated for RM33. I told her, I only have RM10, I’ve been travelling from six until now, eleven in the morning, to get my child to school, I’m hungry.
“In the end, the teacher told me to pay just RM5.50. That’s all I could afford,” said one mother, 39, who asked not to be named, for fear that her child would be victimised. She remembered clearly that the teacher did not issue a receipt for the cash.
“The teacher told us parents that if we don’t buy all that they tell us to buy, then our children will just sit there in school, no books, nothing. If this is the situation, then I’m certain my child cannot complete her secondary schooling,” she continued.
“They make so many demands,” another parent chimed in, “you can get your child into school for free at first, but demands will be made for boarding fees – for hundreds of ringgit – during the end of year holidays.”
No cash incomes
The villagers say they survive on subsistence farming and do not enjoy fixed cash incomes. They are made to pay for school fees, boarding fees and a variety of school equipment, even for school badges.
Parents in Long Pakan say a teacher told them: “How is your child going to be at school when you refuse to buy all these things? Is your child just going to sit there?”
According to another mother, a Long Lama teacher told off a secondary schoolgirl for not paying her boarding fees, saying all the other students had paid up except for her. “You can just continue schooling from outside (the compound) then, instead of staying in the boarding dormitory.”
Most students from the dozens of Penan villages in Baram are boarders at primary and secondary school, because of the enormous distances between schools, and the isolated locations of many settlements.
Penan students often hitch rides on logging company trucks to get to school, and only return home at the end of each term. Schoolgirls have been documented, by a national women’s ministry taskforce, as well as by NGOs, to have been raped by loggers on the way to or from school.
Penan ‘welfare fund’ propaganda
The state government has claimed that there is a special ‘welfare fund’ for the marginalised Penan. The relentless propaganda about this so-called fund for health, education and social welfare has led many Sarawakians to believe the Penan enjoy the status of a ‘chosen people’, accorded special privileges by the state.
Truth be told, the Penan are the ethnic group with the lowest income in Sarawak, as reported on several occasions by Suhakam.
Many Penan children do not complete primary education, and school drop-out rates are among the highest in Malaysia.
Health care is inadequate, as demonstrated by a previous deadly outbreak of measles among unvaccinated Penan children in Belaga.
Access to official documentation – including Mykad, the national identity card, as well as the recognition by state institutions and the voting rights that come with it – is abysmal.
Yet many Penan parents remain determined to keep their children in school.
“My daughter is using her older sister’s uniform, which I kept. Her older sister nearly completed Form Three, but did not finish because of the fees demanded by the school. If not because of this (cost), all the parents in this village would want their children to continue schooling,” said a young mother in Long Pakan.
“The problem is transport and the cost,” explained another parent from Long Item. “The people in school demand fees, but we cannot afford to pay. We were asked for RM100 for a ‘school development fund’ – the teacher even told us we can pay bit by bit! Many students are still in debt.
“We told the teacher, if you force us to pay, and you refuse to accept my child because we cannot afford to pay, what can we do?”
According to parents, Penan students studying in the nearest primary schools in Long Lutin and Long Kevok do not face any demands for cash, and there has never been any mention of contributing to a ‘welfare fund’.
Efforts to reach the state education director for comments were unsuccessful.
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