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Luckily its election time soon. If not, it will be ages until the school is rebuilt.
What the parents ask is logical as well. Why not build the extra classroom now itself? Surely the intake will be higher next year once the students move into the new premises. This is not discrimination or any ethnic cleansing, is it?
Pupils will leave ‘stable’ classrooms next year
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KLANG: Old stables and storerooms are hardly a conducive learning environment but that is what 160 pupils of a school here have been putting up with over the last five years. However, they can now look forward to proper classrooms following an allocation from the Education Ministry for the construction of a three-storey building.
Education Ministry parliamentary secretary Datin Paduka P. Komala Devi said the ministry had allocated RM800,000 for the construction of a proper school building for SJK (T) Tepi Sungai.
It made headlines when it became the first school in the country to fully operate from the Klang Municipal Council storerooms.A section of the school had collapsed in 2003 because of termite infestations and the other buildings were subsequently declared unsafe. Four classrooms, the office and the staff room were moved to the council’s storerooms. A two-classroom block housing Years Five and Six classes and the canteen were the only structures that remained functional. However, a fire last month destroyed one of the classrooms and this prompted the authorities to declare the block out of bounds. With this, all six classes, the office and the staff room operated out of the storerooms, which had once served as stables.
Komala Devi said RM200,000 had earlier been given to the school Parents-Teachers Association and it would also be used for the construction of the new building. The total cost of the building is estimated at RM1.3 million. The school’s new building committee has raised another RM100,000.Komala Devi said the ministry would top up the balance later.
She said the new block was expected to be ready by the next school year.
Komala Devi said delay in building the new block was unavoidable due to the need to get approvals and funding.She said it was also not possible to have temporary classrooms due to the limited space, adding that the school would have to operate from the storerooms for this year.
The long-awaited announcement, however, received mixed reactions from some parents. This is because the new block will have only six classrooms and another one for kindergarten.
“The old school block also had six classrooms, so is there any upgrade? What is the difference?
“They may just as well have refurbished the old school block,” said a parent who declined to be named. He said although the new block had many other rooms for subjects like science and living skills and the staff room, there were not enough classrooms.
Another parent said the school enrolment was expected to increase with the completion of the new building. “Of course the student population is low now. Who would want to send their children to study in horse stables and storerooms?”
