PARLIAMENT An emergency motion tabled by PKR’s Kuantan MP Fuziah Salleh over the urgent relocation of a primary and secondary school in Kuantan has been rejected by deputy speaker Ronald Kiandee today on the basis that the matter was not urgent.

NONE Fuziah ( left ) brought up the emergency motion today after Deputy Education Minister II P Kamalanathan did not answer her question about the school last week in Parliament, though the future for the school remains uncertain after the Education Ministry sent out a letter to ask the students and school administrators to move out by Dec 15.

The St Thomas primary and secondary school in Kuantan sits on lands belonging to the nearby church, and the church had written to the Education Ministry since 2008 informing the ministry about their plans to expand the church’s facilities, Fuziah said during a press conference at the Parliament lobby.

She added that the ministry failed to negotiate with the school or find a place to relocate the school in the five years, but instead went on to try and acquire the church land quietly, and this irked the church.

       

The ministry had yet to identify a piece of land to relocate the school proper, and thus the primary and secondary schoolchildren would have to temporarily occupy two different schools while oddly maintaining the St Thomas school’s own administration.

"They need to shift out by Dec 15, how is this not urgent? The ministry has not given answer and it is their incompetency that brought about this problem in the first place," said Fuziah.

Meanwhile, DAP's Batu Gajah MP V Sivakumar also had his emergency motion on the sudden change of formats for the SPM Moral paper rejected because it was tabled at the same time with Fuziah's motion and two motions cannot be tabled for the same day.

However, Sivakumar said that he would be submitting his motion again separately with hopes of getting it debated on Wednesday.