COMMENT have just received a few distressing photos from a parent who had sent his son to start the new school year at SMK Sundar.

The photos show that textbooks offered to the pupils are insufficient, old and torn, and the mattresses dumped in a heap in the dormitory are old, stained and torn.

In the parent’s own words, “Mereka berebut dengan buku tex seperti ikan makan baja… siapa dulu dia dapat” (they scrambled for the textbooks like fishes going for food, first come, first served).

It is hard enough for parents to leave their children in a faraway school, but to see the appalling conditions their children are subjected to is heartbreaking.

How can the parents have any confidence that their children will fare well when they have to put up with Third World conditions? Their young inquiring minds are ready for learning and development but they are not given proper textbooks to use.

Their growing bodies need proper rest but they are given mattresses that are torn, stained, smelly and unhygienic.

Does the government really expect our schoolchildren to thrive and excel by subjecting them to this squalor? Is it any wonder that our rural students are performing worse than Vietnamese rural students in the Pisa assessment tests?

I have brought up the need for building SMK Long Semadoh on numerous occasions, including during the last Sarawak assembly sitting. Land had been acquired in 2003, but until today, the school has not been built.

No political will

The shocking conditions at SMK Sundar reinforce the urgency of the situation. I would like the minister for women, family and community development to place the highest priority on the building of SMK Long Semadoh.

I request the minister to investigate the conditions at SMK Sundar and to make immediate improvements, such providing proper textbooks and new mattresses and pillows and whatever basic amenities that may be necessary.

Time and again, the press highlights the dilapidated conditions of our rural schools.

The minister-in-charge, and sometimes even the chief minister, makes the appropriate comments but that is it. There is absolutely no change. There is no political will to improve the rural schools.

There is no money from the federal government. Is this the development that the BN government is so proud of achieving?

The shocking state of our rural schools is the only indicator we need of the failure of the BN government. Without proper education for the people, there can be no meaningful development in a country.

The BN government should be thoroughly ashamed of this ‘achievement’ brought about by decades of mismanagement and corruption. Our children deserve better than this!

BARU BIAN is the state assemblyperson for Ba’ Kelalan, Sarawak.​ He is from PKR and practices as a lawyer.