DAYAK community leaders are at odds over the Sarawak government’s move to pay Penan children RM2 a day as incentive to attend school, with a politician calling it misplaced while civil society representatives said the impoverished tribe needs all the help it can get.

PKR’s Abun Sui Anyit, a lawyer, said it would have a “negative cultural effect” on children in the future as they would learn to be motivated only by money.

But Jisin Nyud, president of the Sarawak Teachers Union (STU), and Komeok Joe of civil group Keruan, which supports the Penan, said any help given to the smallest and poorest of tribes in Sarawak, should be taken advantage of.

Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister James Masing announced last month that RM55,000 had been spent in 2017 on the incentives for around 300 Penan children to attend school.

“There must be a start somewhere. It is better than nothing, What is important is to get these children in school,” Jisin told The Malaysian Insight.

“When they are in school, then we can help mould their minds, inculcate in them the importance of education and with a good education we can assimilate them into mainstream society.

“If they are not in class, how are we going to do all these? Their mindset need to be changed. It’s the only way forward for these children as well as their parents.”

The 300 Penan children come from two settlements for natives displaced by the Murum hydroelectric dam in Belaga and attend either SK Metalun at the Metalun resettlement scheme or SK Tegulang in same resettlement.

“Penan children don’t like to go to school, so this is an incentive we give for them to go to school,” Masing had said. He is chairman of the Bakun Charitable Trust, which looks after the educational needs of children displaced by the state’s hydroelectric dam projects.

The incentive is drawn from the Belaga Penan Education Fund parked under the trust.

Abun, who is PKR’s Murum branch chief, feared that the RM2 per day incentive would create a dependency syndrome in the children.

“It will create a money dependency syndrome. Everything will hinge on money,” said the candidate for the Murum state seat in the 2016 Sarawak election.

“This practice of paying them could lead to a point where they could hold the government to ransom on any efforts to assimilate them into the mainstream of society. It will be money, money, money.”

Abun said the government had to find better ways to motivate the children and their parents about education, as the children could be in school “just for the money” but not be learning anything.

According to Masing, attendance of Penan children at school was below 40% three years ago before the incentive started. When the money was given, attendance doubled to between 80% and 90%.

Keruan coordinator Joe said the incentive should not be confined only to primary education nor should it only be given to the Belaga children displaced by the Murum dam.

Penan children needed any help they could get, said Joe, who is a Penan.

“Yes, we have a handful of Penan children, between 10 and 12 of them, who have graduated from university which we are proud of.

“But we Penans also face the problem of the high number of school dropouts because their financially strapped parents cannot afford to send their children to secondary school,” he said.

Secondary schools are normally located in major towns like Marudi, Limbang or Long Lama, hundreds of kilometres from rural settlements.

“Giving them incentives to attend school is good and I am in support of it but there must be an incentive to keep them in school until at least they finish secondary school,” Joe said.

“The concept of education for Penan parents differs from other Malaysians,” he added.

“Their education is to learn about the forests and about survival.”

The Penan are the last of Sarawak’s nomadic peoples, with fewer than a hundred of them still practicing their ancestors’ lifestyle, moving from one place to another and foraging the forest for food.

Their total population is between 15,000 and 16,000 and most now live in settlements. – January 19, 2018.