She said there were no “clear policies” in place to tackle the issues on the ground in her state, and that infrastructure was a major problem with many schools lacking water and electricity.

She questioned what she called the lack of oversight on the part of her federal counterparts in making the decision, saying it did not consider the “realities of statelessness” in East Malaysia.

“Our biggest concern when the federal education minister said undocumented and stateless children can enter schools was the fact that they do not have actual numbers, which can run from hundreds of thousands to close to one million,” the Moyog assemblyman told FMT.

“I think it’s time for us to be more responsible and consider the situation of children, in Sabah especially. It needs very careful planning. If we want to provide education, we need physical infrastructures and teachers. But where will we get resources?”

The federal education ministry dictates the size of allocations and budgets for states to use.

Lasimbang was responding to Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching’s announcement earlier this month that children without citizenship need only produce their birth certificates, adoption papers or court orders to register at government schools effective next year.

Teo said these students would be allowed to sit for examinations such as UPSR, SPM and STPM.

Previously, this was not the case for stateless children and kids of economic migrants in the country.

Lasimbang told FMT that Putrajaya should instead decentralise education as well as health management, and give more leeway for Sabah and Sarawak to cater to their own people. She said they would benefit from autonomy and be able to do things much better.

“We’re talking about schools with no electricity, no water, barely decent internet – imagine speeds of one megabyte per second – and you expect them to go through the Industrial Revolution? It’s not realistic. When this is all in place, then it becomes more conducive.

“We need to fix things on the ground first and ensure that schools have proper internet and clean water. Some schools collect rain water for use, and during the dry season when there is no rain, teachers don’t go for classes, students don’t come, and can you blame them?”

“We have to look into that now because what they say won’t work… so give us the authority to make the decision, so at least even in cases like this, or even in emergency situations such as fixing a collapsed school, it is doable from our end. We should be making the decisions.”

This will also entail being able to decide how to merge existing school systems for the stateless.

“We would still be doing what has been stated in the Dasar Pendidikan Negara,” she added.

She said her ministry had to walk the talk carefully as in Sabah, alternative means of education existed for stateless and refugee children. She said they could not willy-nilly put a seven-year-old stateless child in the same class as a national school student or make that the norm.

There are said to be some 800,000 stateless children in Sabah alone.

Currently, NGOs and welfare groups in Sabah and Sarawak organise schooling sessions for migrant children or stateless children, most of whom are of Filipino and Indonesian descent, and those from the many indigenous tribes native to Borneo.

Some of these schools are deemed illegal and are usually dismantled by immigration authorities.

Education and healthcare in Sarawak and Sabah have long been considered poor and underdeveloped.

Rights group Lawyers for Liberty has urged Putrajaya to allow stateless children to take the public examinations they previously missed due to a lack of documents.

The previous government had issued a circular stating that children born to a Malaysian parent, but without proper documentation, could be enrolled in government schools. However, it was silent on whether they could take public exams.

These children will now need a verification letter from the village headman that they are children of Malaysian citizens.

Lasimbang, whose party Warisan took over the Sabah state government in the 14th general election, said her administration had since tasked the ministries for education and health in the state Cabinet to ensure both areas are dealt with adequately.

She claimed this was not done when the previous state administration was in power.

Lasimbang was speaking to FMT on the sidelines of a conference on non-discrimination here.

She also said she considered Sabah to be “nearly finished” with race-based politics after May 9. She said for too long, the majority of Sabahans were “indoctrinated” by the former administration, which was part of the former ruling coalition, and that they had had enough.