At first glance, the picture of rustic beauty of several children treading over boulders near a brook evoked a feeling of joy and merriment. The kids appeared to be enjoying a nature's outing, possibly organised by their school as an extra-curricular activity over a weekend.

However, when reality is revealed, a sense of outrage and anger gushes out. The facade of tranquility hides a grim reality: a daily routine for the children, all dressed in mufti, started at the unearthly hour of 4.30am and involved trudging over hill, cliffs and rocks on a 15km journey to school.

The children, about a score of them, hail from Kampung Moingoh, a remote village in Sabah, within the parliamentary constituency of Tuaran, represented by Barisan Nasional's Wilfred Maduius Tangau.

That these pupils were in mufti attire apparently showed that their parents could not afford the luxury of proper school uniforms, other priorities for bare essentials in the household budget ranking higher.

The Parent-Teacher Association of their school, SK Rungus Nahaba, tried to alleviate the children's suffering by building a hostel, measuring just six metres by five metres and holding a kitchen and two rooms, to accommodate the children who did not fancy the long, tiring trek home during the weekdays. However, they still had to make the arduous journey home for rations during the weekend.

The country has been trumpeting the fact that it boasts The World's Tallest Building (two times over since it's Petronas "Twin" Towers) and that the Kuala Lumpur International Airport can rival the best of airports worldwide. Yet we still come face-to-face with such harsh realities of Malaysian communities living in such hardship.

How can we expect children who have to endure such harsh conditions to absorb the day's lessons properly? How can a relatively rich nation like us allow such bodies, hearts and minds to be deprived of a reasonably comfortable home environment to grow and mature into useful, productive citizens of Malaysia, sometimes dubbed "the lucky country" by many visitors?

It is outrageous that as we aspire towards developed-nation status in just two decades that young Malaysians in Tuaran have had their tender bodies worked to their bones just to get to school. Picture seven to 12-year-olds huddled over a wood fire just to boil water to prepare for breakfast in a hostel that's more like a squatter colony hut.

Their plight brings to mind the haunting rendition of Matt Monro's Wednesday's Child : Is a child of woe, Wednesday's child, cries alone, I know... I just hope some of them make it to becoming Friday's children.

Before the year 2020, the Prime Minister harbours hopes that a Nobel Prize winner may yet emerge from our blessed land. But let's also face the harsh realities that stare us in the face.

Spending four to five hours daily on a school-going trek is a sheer waste of energy. Not only is a young body being physically deprived, the time saved daily could have been spent reading in the library, embarking on an Enid Blyton's Famous Five adventure or solving a crime with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

The opportunity lost in the development of young hearts and minds could mean delaying the birth of a Malaysian Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Rabindranath Tagore or Pearl S. Buck by another century.

It's not that our country lacks the resources. It's the will that's lacking. I hope our political leaders in places of authority set the country's development priorities right.

If the government can immediately rush an SOS allocation (like they did under the banner of Malaysia Boleh to the South Pole Jump, or was it a ride?) to Kampung Moingoh and other interior communities lagging behind mainstream development in Malaysia, we can help relieve the children's plight a little.

In the long term, the government must allocate funds to build hostels in the suburbs to serve communities not served by adequate roads and transportation. I believe tax payers would not begrudge that children like those from Tuaran suburbs be settled in hostels and given a monthly allowance so that young minds should be allowed the time to develop mentally and emotionally, supported by the right infrastructure and social amenities.

I believe one KLCC development foregone could have bestowed basic education rights and facilities to thousands of young Malaysians, reminding KL folk, especially the national leaders mostly centered in the capital city, that there are also lives and souls out there in the villages in Sabah and Sarawak, Pahang and Terengganu.

It galls me as a taxpayer to find "clowns" elected to BN constituencies in the last November polls, abandoning their party a few days later, then hogging the media limelight for the next few weeks in righteous posturing that they were men of principles and what they were doing was in the best interest of their electorate.

Among other things, their demands included that the development allocations of RM500,000 given annually to BN-controlled constituencies be retained. I am all for diverting the allocations from these circus arenas to Tuaran for distribution to the rural settlements there.

In fact, allocations for rural constituencies should not be the same as urban areas like Petaling Jaya or Jelutong. The rural constituencies should be graded and then given five or maybe 20 times more on a "need" basis, and regardless of whether they are BN or opposition seats.

It is only fair and equitable that the economically disadvantaged and depressed should receive more help than the developed and well-served.

At this point, we must salute the headmasters and teachers who serve in the outlying areas with dedication, sometimes like their young charges, trekking long distances to their schools.

Teaching as a profession has lost a lot of the respect accorded to it just one or two decades ago, but we still have teachers who continue to earn the community's respect because of their passionate quest.

We also often seen how generously Malaysians respond to fund-raising activities to help victims of war, civil strife, floods and earthquakes, in far-away lands. Let's practise the maxim "charity begins at home" and let not these children of Kampung Moingob be forgotten after a day of media spotlight.

On a more optimistic note, I must here record a frank acknowledgment by the new Education Minister Musa Mohamad in his recent address to his ministry staff that "the numerous complaints against the nation's system have basis and much needs to be done to bring back the quality".

The litany of complaints include teachers with poor morals and professional ethics, non-dynamic school principals, indiscipline among students, crowded classrooms and unsatisfactory teacher-pupil ratios, non-relevant curriculum, and of course, poverty-stricken rural schools.

The first step towards resolution or amelioration of any problem is the recognition that such a problem exists. In Musa's words, I place great hope and confidence that we have seen the first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel to the seemingly endless problems besieging the field of education.

In four to five years hence, I hope to be in a position to give a glowing "report card" of Musa's performance in nurturing the young bodies, hearts and minds of the new millennial Malaysians.