Uthayakumar says it would take Pakatan 480 years to rebuild all Tamil schools in Selangor.
PETALING JAYA: The Human Rights Party (HRP) today sought to dampen the Selangor government’s sense of achievement in rebuilding the Midlands Tamil school, saying Pakatan Rakyat had performed a “feat” in taking nearly five years to do so.
The arithmetic would show that Pakatan would need 480 years to rebuild the remaining 96 Tamil schools in Selangor to be on par with Midlands, said HRP pro-tem secretary general P Uthayakumar in a media statement that maintained a mocking tone throughout.
The school now sits on a four-acre plot in Shah Alam. The facilities are three storeys high, accommodating 24 classrooms, a computer and science laboratory and a convention centre. The state is reported to have footed RM3 million of the RM4.9 million cost.
Uthayakumar also claimed that the convention centre, which is said to be able to accommodate up to 3,000 people, was not under the school’s exclusive control and that it would receive only 30% of profits from private functions.
He poured scorn on the publicity blitz leading up to the unveiling of the upgraded school, calling it “full-blown pomp-and-grandeur propaganda”. Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim’s administration took out full-page colour advertisements in all four Tamil dailies on April 14, “the eve of the grand finale,” he said.
“We appreciate this good effort. But how come we have never heard or seen this magnitude of propaganda during the opening of a Malay, Chinese, Islamic or even Orang Asli school?”
Uthayakumar said he had never before seen such grandeur in the launching of a school, not even when his two-storey primary English school was built in the 1950s in his fishing village in Tumpat, Kelantan.
He said it was not necessary for Pakatan to hold such an exaggerated celebration just because it had provided the public with a basic need.
“Article 12 of the Federal Constitution states that there should be no discrimination in providing education out of the funds of a public authority,” he said.
“So why a celebration over this a la Umno/BN one-off Tamil school? It’s like in the Malay proverb, ayam telor sebiji rioh sekampung (a chicken lays one egg and the entire village gets into a frenzy of excitement).”
He asked the state government to explain why it had not decided to rebuild all the state’s 97 Tamil schools simultaneously and thereby have no more “pathetic cowshed-like” facilities.
“Is this a 13th general election political gimmick? We would have had reason to join in the front rows of this celebration – if we had been invited – had the rest of the schools been similarly rebuilt during Pakatan’s five-year rule.”
PETALING JAYA: The Human Rights Party (HRP) today sought to dampen the Selangor government’s sense of achievement in rebuilding the Midlands Tamil school, saying Pakatan Rakyat had performed a “feat” in taking nearly five years to do so.The arithmetic would show that Pakatan would need 480 years to rebuild the remaining 96 Tamil schools in Selangor to be on par with Midlands, said HRP pro-tem secretary general P Uthayakumar in a media statement that maintained a mocking tone throughout.
The school now sits on a four-acre plot in Shah Alam. The facilities are three storeys high, accommodating 24 classrooms, a computer and science laboratory and a convention centre. The state is reported to have footed RM3 million of the RM4.9 million cost.
Uthayakumar also claimed that the convention centre, which is said to be able to accommodate up to 3,000 people, was not under the school’s exclusive control and that it would receive only 30% of profits from private functions.
He poured scorn on the publicity blitz leading up to the unveiling of the upgraded school, calling it “full-blown pomp-and-grandeur propaganda”. Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim’s administration took out full-page colour advertisements in all four Tamil dailies on April 14, “the eve of the grand finale,” he said.
“We appreciate this good effort. But how come we have never heard or seen this magnitude of propaganda during the opening of a Malay, Chinese, Islamic or even Orang Asli school?”
Uthayakumar said he had never before seen such grandeur in the launching of a school, not even when his two-storey primary English school was built in the 1950s in his fishing village in Tumpat, Kelantan.
He said it was not necessary for Pakatan to hold such an exaggerated celebration just because it had provided the public with a basic need.
“Article 12 of the Federal Constitution states that there should be no discrimination in providing education out of the funds of a public authority,” he said.
“So why a celebration over this a la Umno/BN one-off Tamil school? It’s like in the Malay proverb, ayam telor sebiji rioh sekampung (a chicken lays one egg and the entire village gets into a frenzy of excitement).”
He asked the state government to explain why it had not decided to rebuild all the state’s 97 Tamil schools simultaneously and thereby have no more “pathetic cowshed-like” facilities.
“Is this a 13th general election political gimmick? We would have had reason to join in the front rows of this celebration – if we had been invited – had the rest of the schools been similarly rebuilt during Pakatan’s five-year rule.”
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