KUALA TERENGGANU Dec 26 — The Terengganu State Education Department (JPNT) has no objection to allow seven-year-old Nurul Jannah Abdullah to enter Year Two next year if her adopted parents can produce the necessary documents according to Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

JPNT director Shafruddin Ali Hussin said the move was to give priority to students who are Malaysian citizens before giving places to non-citizens in national schools.

"We need to give priority to local students, but we will enrol them (non-citizens) in the school if their families can submit the documents specified in the SOP.

"The adopted family should try to get the necessary documents if they want to send these children to school, and this is not the first case involving such matters,” he said when contacted by Bernama.

Shafruddin was commenting on the dilemma faced by Nurul Jannah’s adoptive parents, Junainah Othman, 40, and her husband Zulkifli Yunus, 45, from Kampung Ibai Penunjuk, Dungun, to send her to school because they neither have her passport nor her biological parents’ marriage certificate.

Nurul Jannah is the daughter of an illegal immigrant couple — her biological mother is from Indonesia, while her father is a Bangladeshi.

According to Shafruddin, there had been a similar case in which the adoptive parents had to take their adopted child back to the child’s homeland to find the biological parents to obtain the required documents and the child had now been enrolled in a government school. — Bernama