The very young children must have been terrorised by helicopters swirling above them. This was not a search for a downed aircraft that could have been spotted from the air. In fact, small aircraft and helicopters that might crash in thick jungle are also not very easily seen from the air. Here were little children moving on the ground under thick foliage of the forest. They were not carrying anything that could emit signals that could be picked up by the helicopters.

The young children had run away out of fear of those looking after them - the teachers. Thus the search for them should never have been done the way you search for lost hikers. Were the 400-over rescuers aware of this psychological state of the children? Anything that would further frighten them should have been avoided at all cost.

The story that even sniffer dogs could not pick up the children’s trail is very telling of the failure to act swiftly. Apparently they were only brought in days later when all traces of their scent had faded or been washed away by rain.

Who were the 400-over rescuers that were brought in to look for the children? How many of them were experts in jungle survival, in looking for little signs of movements left behind by the moving children - e.g. trampled plants?

The children could not have been cutting new trails in the jungle. They must have walked where there was least resistance from the undergrowth, bushes and plants. If children could find passages to move in the forest, how is it that the 400-over rescuers could not find these passages and follow them?

If paired in twos, there would have been 200 pairs. If each pair had moved along just one such passage, the children need not have died or almost died in the cases of those found alive. There might not even have been so many passages where children could have moved in the jungle.

Were these 400-over ‘rescuers’ speakers of the dialect of the children? Calling out to children in their own dialect, in tones that were not threatening or frightening but loving, would have been most useful.

Did the ‘rescuers’ fire any shots or flares to ‘attract’ attention? This would have terrorised the children further.

And why the disbelief by the police and others in authority about the running away of the children until several days later so much so the tracker dogs could no longer pick up any scent trails?

If you ask me, there are people who should be sacked from their jobs for not carrying out their duties properly, for not rising to the occasion in an emergency situation, for incompetency. But Pemandu CEO Idris Jala will say “the government does not sack its employees”. I wonder, if he were CEO of his own private company, would he keep such employees and even find ways to reward them with certificates of appreciation and even more?

And now we have some brilliant directive from the deputy prime minister - that these children will no longer will be housed in hostels, but in the main school buildings. He surely can’t see the forest for the trees. The problem is not with the buildings, but with people. People who should be firm yet loving to these children, people who have control over them but should not have any agendas of their own.

This got into the news because children went missing. What is happening in the other orang asli schools?