05 January 2014

Pelajar ada, sekolah dan cikgu tak dak...


Kira-kira 20 pelajar SJK Tamil Seaport, Kelana Jaya bakal menghabiskan tahun persekolahan ini berada di bawah pokok di sebuah tanah lapang.

Ini ekoran ibu bapa mereka mahu sekolah yang ditutup secara tiba-tiba bulan lalu itu dibuka semula.

Ibu bapa enggan menerima arahan Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia untuk berpindah dari sekolah yang berusia 80 tahun itu ke blok baru sekolah di Kampung Lindungan, Subang kerana terlalu jauh dan menyukarkan perjalanan ke sekolah.

"Jika sekolah ini ditutup, tiada lagi Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (Tamil) di Kelana Jaya dan Lembah Subang," kata pengerusi Persatuan Ibu Bapa dan Guru (PIBG) sekolah itu, V Kumar, hari ini.

Menurut Kumar, peningkatan kos hidup menyebabkan ramai ibu bapa yang mempunyai pendapatan kecil tidak mampu membiayai perjalanan 9km setiap hari untuk menghantar dan mengambil anak mereka di sekolah baru.

Ibu bapa terbabit turut menyuarakan kesulitan mendapatkan perkhidmatan bas sekolah untuk menghantar anak mereka ke sekolah baru.

Pihak kementerian memberitahu ibu bapa terbabit bahawa tanah di Kelana Jaya itu yang sebelum ini milik Perbadanan Kemajuan Negeri Selangor (PKNS), dijual kepada pemaju swasta, tetapi rekod yang didapati mereka menunjukkan ia masih bawah nama PKNS.

Ibu bapa yang tidak berpuas hati ini telah menentang pemindahan sekolah ini selama beberapa tahun dan mahu kerajaan negeri Selangor campur tangan bagi memastikan tapak sekolah itu kekal.

Bangunan sekolah lama telah dikunci oleh guru besarnya, menyebabkan ibu bapa hanya mampu meninggalkan anak mereka di beberapa bangku plastik di tanah lapang bersebelahan kawasan sekolah, tanpa guru untuk mendidik mereka. -
Malaysiakini


Pakatan taking a leaf from BN's playbook...

First it was Selangor Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim with his pay hike for elected officials, and now it is Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng with his new Mercedes Benz; both cases seem to point to Pakatan taking a leaf out of BN’s playbook.

Khalid drew fire when he announced very high pay hikes for elected Selangor state officials late last year.

Lim was heavily criticised when the state government decided to purchase a Mercedes Benz for him in place of his current Toyota Camry which is scarcely two months old.

One way to see it is to say that Pakatan leaders are indeed taking the cue from BN leaders in accumulating the perks of being in charge, Khalid with the Selangor pay hike and then Lim’s shiny new Mercedes.

However, that may not necessarily ring true as thus far both the Pakatan moves have been at least justified and have been argued to be far less than what some BN leaders have reaped officially and unofficially.

The Selangor pay hike, for all its controversy, was actually justified when even the BN majority Parliament had decided to increase pay for MPs and federal ministers.

And as PKR strategist Rafizi Ramli told a news portal, Lim's new official purchase is actually value for money.

But perhaps the particular strategy that Pakatan has learnt is to make use of the naturally short attention span of the rakyat in dealing with the fallout of seemingly unpopular decisions.

Indeed how many BN scandals have been swept under the rug from sheer overexposure and lag time in the media?

I mean, how many of us now make a fuss about the Selangor pay hike anymore? Justifiable or not, how many of us actually remember?

This is similar to the shooting-related deaths that had at one time shocked us in 2013, but which now seem the norm and no one pays attention to such cases unless they involve prominent personalities or unique circumstance.

And just as Khalid's “controversy” and all the others have died a quiet death, so perhaps shall the new hoohaa over the Penang CM’s new Mercedes Benz.

After all, this is what Pakatan had learnt the hard way in its campaigning, as issues of BN’s excesses it tried to bring to the rakyat may generate widespread reaction at the outset.

But all scandals will mostly fall through the cracks of public attention after a time unless there is actual traction to sustain the issue or “exposes” to highlight potential abuses.

As Rafizi opined, Lim is more than able to defend the purchase and believes the people will eventually accept it, despite the bad timing of the move when price hikes are burdening the rakyat.

“Pakatan will have to contend with one or two weeks of getting whacked by the media,” the Pandan MP told the portal further, shrugging off long-term effects of the blunder.

And as the person largely responsible for digging up and helping sustain the National Feedlot Centre corruption saga, Rafizi should know what he is talking about.

As out of the many “scandals” he and his Pakatan colleagues had highlighted, they know all too well that public apathy will almost always set in unless you can dig up more spicy tales or create consistent focus on the matter.

A lesson on public perception and the rakyat’s stamina for issue retention that perhaps Pakatan is now using to its own advantage, as Rafizi said it himself when commenting on Lim’s case, it is about timing and public relations.- Hazlan Zakaria,theantdaily


Apa lagi UMNO mahu...



 
 cheers.

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