I write with concern as an observer of the Education Ministry. It is understandable that when a leader of a nation makes unsolicited comments about certain issues in another country, he may err because he does not truly comprehend the intricacies of that country.

However it is another matter, when the leader of a ministry of a country concerned to which the comment is targeted, fully concurs to it, taking it up as a cause without any thought for the repercussions that would arise.

Without the sound comment made by the prime minister himself that these vernacular schools are national-type schools which follow a Malaysian curriculum, who knows what this can snowball into? Taken seriously in this instance, it would mean the abolishment of the vernacular schools.

Scrutinising the goings on in the ministry concerned, one can only guess what the minister's hidden agenda might be.

This would be the first time I have heard of a minister giving the thumbs up to retrieving so-called wrongly paid-out salaries to Chinese school teachers from the years 1989-2000.

Why only the Chinese schools and why if there was an error, was it not spotted earlier by the authorities concerned?

If at all, salaries were wrongly paid, then it is the ministry's error and not those who were receiving their salaries legally. Would it not further aggravate the problem of the shortage of Chinese school teachers where a major number are running on the strength of dedicated temporary Chinese school teachers?

With this move, would it not then deter the employment of temporary school teachers?

Surely, the inevitable would happen, that without the Chinese teacher, the Chinese schools would go. It has been a repeated rhetoric each year, that steps are being made to redress the issue of this shortage but ironically the continual rhetoric indicates that little is actually done.

With regard to the 67 students of SJK (C) Damansara who are now in the makeshift school, it must be noted that in the Unesco charter, one to which Malaysia subscribes, every child is entitled to an education of his choice.

As I read in the newspapers of how these powers that be issue warnings of registration deadlines at the new school, of threats of being barred from the UPSR examination because they are not registered, of officials from the state education departments descending upon the small community of learners 'to check' on the condition of their school and finally of the minister announcing that they are now no longer students of that school, I cannot but feel that these are veiled threats in the good name of policy by Goliath to pressure the defenceless Davids to submit.

I urge the ministry to give these children their old school back. Let them have the education that they want. Let there then be a policy of a cap on the student population in the old building.

Indeed there is a demand for Chinese schools in new housing areas. It has been reported that parents in the Wangsa Maju area in Kuala Lumpur, who requested for the building of a Chinese school because there were no such school in that area, were rebuffed by the ministry officials themselves.

It was with great reluctance that their memorandum and petition were finally received by an officer there. What with this initial wall, one can only guess what will happen to their request. New housing area requires schools and if there is such a request, the Ministry should not disallow it.

If at all there is fear that these schools are catering to only one race, Indian or Chinese, there is now a substantial figure of bumiputras themselves who are sending their children to these schools.

Some have excelled to the point of coming out tops in these schools. Some parents also want their children to learn another language. It is therefore not a question that vernacular schools are the cause of lack of national unity.

These schools have existed and grown with the nation. If at all there is alarm for national disunity, then it is due to the mounting frustrations felt by the underprivileged as a result of the years of socio-economic deprivation, where if at all there was any policy drawn up to aid those in need, it never reached those really living below the poverty line.

No one has questioned the single-race population in the fully residential schools in Peninsular Malaysia purportedly set up to help the rural bumiputra poor to secure a sound education.

More often than not, it has now evolved into elitist schools for even the rich Malay. If at all there is the question of national unity, of fear of schools catering to one race being hotbeds for the breeding of insular cultural socialisation, perhaps as a start the doors to these schools should open to others as well.