Several parents from Jinjang, Kuala Lumpur, are seeing red over the possibility of having to cough up an extra RM240 in fees for their children to continue their education at a public school in the area.

And the reason for this: their mothers are foreign nationals.

This was conveyed to the parents by the school via letters, which also told them to 'apply for permission' from the Federal Territory Education Department's communications unit.

Met last night, the parents said this 'new ruling' had left them dumfounded.

"I don't understand. I am Malaysian. My wife is from Taiwan, but my 12-year-old child is Malaysian, has a Malaysian identity card (IC) and was born here.

"Is she still to be treated as a foreigner just because my wife is Taiwanese?" asked Ong Seng Eng (left).

He said although the charge was steep considering his modest income as a renovator, it was not the main reason for his objection.

"Even if we were people of means living in fancy bungalows, I would still be dissatisfied with paying the RM240. My child has an IC and a birth certificate. Why do we have to pay extra?" he asked.

Other parents echoed similar concerns.

'New regulations'

Lock Heng Chong (left), whose wife is from Thailand, said the school authorities themselves had certified his daughter's citizenship when he submitted her documents on Wednesday.

He showed to malaysiakini copies of 'JPWP/HDS001' application forms he had filled which were entitled 'foreign students' application to enrol in state/state-subsidised school.

He also pointed to copies of his daughter's birth certificate and IC bearing the official stamp of the school's assistant to the headmaster.

"I asked the school officer why this was happening when none of it was necessary during all these years that my Form 1 daughter has been in school. All she could say was 'there are new regulations."

Kepong parliamentarian Dr Tan Seng Giaw (left) said he had raised the matter in Parliament on Wednesday in the presence of Education Minister Hishamuddin Hussein.

"There's never been any such regulation. I've asked Hishamuddin about this, but he didn't give me an answer.

"Perhaps he needed time to look into this before responding," said the DAP deputy chairperson.

Nothing new

Met today, Education Department officials denied that these were new rules.

"It's nothing new. These regulations come under the 1996 Education Act pertaining to student enrollment, the keeping of registration books, and conditions for the continuation of enrollment," said one officer who declined to be named.

"It's just that there has never been a comprehensive exercise to record such particulars since the law was put into place. The ministry just wants to find out how many children of permanent residents and other foreigners are enrolled in our public schools," he said

"We don't know, for example, how many undocumented migrants have their children enrolled in public schools. That's all this is, for record-keeping purposes," he added.

Another department official, also requesting anonymity, said the forms were distributed at all educational institutions in the country from the primary school level up to universities. The target of the exercise were pupils and students with at least one non-Malaysian parent.

A third official further clarified that the charges, RM 240 for the secondary school level, RM 120 for primary school pupils, would only be levied on parents upon approval of their application forms.

"The approving body is at the ministry level, not here at the department, and definitely not at the school. Furthermore, there's no question of payment at this moment. That only comes into the picture if the approval has already been made at the ministry.

"The school was wrong if they said these parents have to pay," he said.

Despite such assurances, however, some parents felt the ministry's discretion in deciding whether or not Malaysians with foreign spouses have to pay extra for their children's education meant the possibility was still there.

"I don't know. I'm paying taxes just as other Malaysian parents are paying their taxes. If it does happen that such parents have to pay extra, it sounds like discrimination to me," said one parent, who is a teacher, when met at the department.