The Story of Three Boys

I went fishing last Sunday with a friend. As usual we headed straight to our favorite spot, somewhere in Kg Silam, Lahad Datu. When we arrived there, we saw a few youths swimming and picnicking on the beach. The place was not a sandy beach but still a beautiful gulf-like seaside.

It's not about the fishing I want to share, instead it's about three boys who came to us while we're fishing. We've met these boys a few times before and they were always eager to help us find live baits. Sometimes when our lures got stucked to the rocks or seaweed, they'll offer themselves to dive and rescue our lures. However, we never knew their names and never intended to know.

This time the boys were quite irritating. We were fishing and they were splashing around in the water right where we were. Later on we moved to another spot and still they followed us and continue their splashing. Sensing that we will never caught a fish that day, we stopped fishing and started to pack our things. One of the boys, who look brighter than the other boys, asked me if I could give them a ride with my car to their house. I agreed.

During the ride, we took the opportunity to asked a few question to the boys. We now know that they were brothers, the eldest is 13 years old, the smarter one is 11 and the youngest is about 8. Most of our questions were answered by the smarter boy as if he's the spokeperson for the group. Later on, we found out why.

When we asked them about school, they were quite hesitant to answer. Seconds passed before the smarter boy told us that his eldest brother is not schooling at the moment. If he's attending school, he would be a Form One student of a secondary school. The reason his brother not attending school, according to the "spokeperson", is because the parents were late in registering him for secondary school. Appeal to the school has been made but was rejected. What a pity! A boy has to waste a year of his life to someone else's fault/bureaucracy!

The smarter boy also told us that his younger brother never went to scool. What? But why? When we heard the reason, we were flabbergasted. His younger brother never went to school because he has no birth certificate! Therefore, technically he's not a citizen of this country. Without his birth certificate, he can't apply for MyKad, thus, what future does he have? Can you imagine what will happen to the boy 10, 15 years from now?

Of course, we asked them why the youngest one has no birth cert, so the spokeperson replied that their parents had no money to register his brother's birth. No more question was asked after that.

Just before we dropped the boys, I asked the smarter boy if he's in school. Much to our delight, he answered yes. No wonder he looks smarter than his brothers, and more talkative.

So, I wonder why the parents never registered the birth of their son? It was impossible to think that they continously have no money to register the birth, and as far as i know, registering a birth at National Registry Dept.(NRD) is free of charge. The nearest NRD branch is in Lahad Datu which is about 25 minutes drive from their home. Surely transportation is not a problem. Don't they think of their child future? Are they so poor that they had to fail their responsibility to their child?

One more question, how could the parents be late in registering their eldest son for school?

The more we asked, the more confused we became.

Hmm..Pity the boys...Lesson to all of us, be grateful for what we have..