MCA will lodge a complaint against a primary school headmistress in Klang for allegedly allowing “blessed water” to be distributed to students under his care for the past several years.

Klang MCA public complaints bureau deputy chief Tan Bok Koon said he wants the Ministry of Education to suspend the headmistress pending investigations, and warned that he would lodge a police report if this recurs.

Tan claimed the water, supplied by a Singapore-based group had religious incantations recited over it, and is purported to make the students smarter and score better results in examinations.

“I want to criticise such actions, because schools are not the right place to be propagating personal religions.

“If our children and our teachers work hard, but the credit for their results goes to this so called ‘blessed water’; this is unfair to the students and teachers,” Tan told a press conference in MCA’s Klang office today.

He added that this also misleads students into thinking that they can achieve good results without hard work.

Tan said he had made inquiries to the school board and its Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) after receiving complaints from parents, and found that both groups are vehemently opposed to the headmistress' actions and had not authorised her to do so.

Malaysiakini is withholding the names of the school, the headmistress and the Singapore-based group pending their responses to our queries.

Awaiting headmistress' response

When Malaysiakini visited the school after the press conference, its reporters were informed that the headmistress was busy and would not receive visitors.

The news portal has also contacted the headmistress via online messaging services, and is waiting for a reply.

Also present at the press conference this morning was the school’s PTA representative Choo Kim San, who said the Singapore group first came to the school in March 2014.

“The Singapore group told the school’s three bodies (PTA, alumni association its and board of directors) that they want to give a talk on how to boost the students’ results and wanted us to come, so about 10 of us came.

“It is on that night when they sprinkled the water all around and said there was something wrong with the magnetic fields. They cheated us to come,” Choo (photo) said.

Choo added that the school board has told the headmistress again and again not to organise such events, but such calls went unheeded.

The Singapore group also set up a machine in the school compound to dispense the water to students for about RM0.50 a bottle, but it was later made available for free.
 
A school storeroom was also found to be full of bottles of the water, and the headmistress even allowed a news crew from China broadcaster CCTV to film the matter last week, he said.
 
“I think they want to use the school’s reputation and background to promote themselves,” said Choo, who is also a member of the school board.
 
Malaysiakini has seen the water dispenser from afar during its visit, but was not able to examine it up close.

Choo also said the school board and PTA did not fully appreciate the magnitude of the problem until a letter of appreciation from the school was circulated online.

It was then that the PTA decided to make their grouses public.
 
He slammed the headmistress for endorsing the Singapore group and implying that the school’s three bodies also supported its activities, without consent from the three bodies.
 
The endorsement letter, dated May 29, 2014, is signed by the school’s headmistress and is addressed to the founder and head of the Singapore group.
 
According to the letter, the school’s events only drew about 50 parents at the most, despite it having about 1,000 students. The school board had therefore approved RM100,000 to hold a feast to boost attendance.
 
Just prior to the function, the letter said, the Singapore group came and ‘drove away the negative life forces and life energies, and increased the positive energies in the school’.
 
Subsequently, the function and another school event turned out to be a success, and the letter urged the group to return.
 
Choo said the RM100,000 did not come from the school, but was entirely a personal contribution from the chairperson of the school board for a graduation ceremony.
 
“We could not simply use the board’s money for things like this,” he said.

He added that the roaring response from parents at the events had nothing to do with the water, but because every member of the PTA secretariat had made phone calls to parents urging them to come.

“It is wrong (for them) to now claim that for the parents’ attendance.

It is also unfair to the PTA secretariat, the members of which had worked themselves to death trying to persuade the parents to come.

“They said they sprinkled the water and the parents would come. So easy,” Choo chided.