SANDAKAN – Desperate for help, a villager residing in Pitas resorted to posting pictures online of over 20 children crammed on a wooden boat without life jackets just to make it to school.
Khairul Abidin, 40, used his Facebook account – under the moniker A Korn Korn – to post his concerns on January 13, hoping that it will go viral and finally draw attention from the government and the public.
When contacted by The Vibes, he said that the problem has been going on for years, with 27 pupils of SK Mengkapon from Kg Pituru Timbang Taun and Kg Mengakapon Laut having no choice but to put their safety at stake on the boat, which only has a maximum capacity of 15 passengers.
“The problem is, the new school session for Primary 1 students is going to start in March, and there will be 10 more students who will need to get to school with the boat.
They are not going to fit in there. Even now, they are cramming themselves into the boat and it is really dangerous,” he said.
Khairul said the boat that they are currently using is a fisherman’s boat rented by the villagers, which is the biggest boat available in the area.
“It takes about 30 to 40 minutes for the children to get to school with the boat (via Sg Bongkol), because the boatman has to go slow for their safety.
“There is an alternative route that one could take by car, which would take about 30 minutes to get the students from the villages to school.
“However, the villagers here are mostly fishermen. We are known to be the poorest district, and people should understand that the villagers here cannot afford a car,” he said.
Khairul said he had taken the problem to the local people’s representatives and the school board multiple times, but was only told to wait for assistance to come.
It has been like this for many years. I cannot take it anymore. I worry about the safety of our children.
“They are not my children but they are my neighbours’ children, my relatives’ children – I fear for their safety, seeing that this is happening every day.
“I highlighted the problem on my Facebook post, hoping that it would go viral. I do not intend to blame anyone for this, I just want to ask for help – be it from the government, or non-government organisations. We desperately need a proper boat for the kids,” he stressed.
There are about 100 families living in Kg Pituru Timbang Taun and Kg Mengakapon Laut, and they fall under the Bengkoka state seat and Kudat federal seat.
Khairul said that the adults would use their own boats to get to the other side, but their small boats could only carry a couple of passengers.
Children need bigger boats, not just life jackets: Khairul
A day after Khairul posted the photos on his Facebook, he said a group of police personnel showed up at the village to inspect the situation.
The police personnel then went to the school and distributed life jackets to the students.
“I was surprised to learn that the school had kept the life jackets all along. However, after they distributed the life jackets, there were still seven students who did not get the jackets.
“The next day, the kids cramped into the boat again, now with life jackets on.
“It made the space even smaller so that several kids had to take off their life jackets in order for them to fit into the boat.
“I believe the police personnel were there to try to solve the problem following my Facebook post, but the problem is obviously not solved. We need a new boat,” he reiterated.
Pitas is listed in the 12th Malaysia Plan as among 10 of the country’s poorest districts.
Govt securing funds for larger boats: deputy rural minister
Last Friday, The Borneo Post reported Bengkoka assemblyman Harun Durabi, who is also Sabah deputy rural minister, as saying that he is working towards securing funds to get bigger boats to serve his community, in addition to providing life jackets to children who have to take boats to go to school.
“I will have to get the exact number of children for the safety jackets. I will visit them soon.
“The river plays an integral role in connecting the rural communities of Pitas to the outside world.
My constituents have been using the river to communicate with the outside world since time immemorial. That is how it has been all this while,” he was quoted as saying.
He explained that many of the villages in his constituency are unreachable by road, and so many communities reside by the riverbank.
Meanwhile, SK Mengkapon’s senior assistant of administration, Justin Magital denied having kept the life jackets in school for years without giving them to the students in need.
He said when he was the senior assistant of students’ welfare division of the school from 2015 until 2017, he would make annual applications for life jackets to the students, and they would be distributed every year without fail.
“It is just that we were unlucky. We received the life jackets late this year. It reached the school on Wednesday (January 12) and we made the arrangement to distribute them on Friday.
But the photos went viral on Thursday night. Now it makes people think that we only gave the life jackets because of the viral post when that is not the case,” he said.
Justin said that the school may have overlooked the transportation used by the students from the two villages, as the students actually had a better and bigger boat given by the previous people’s representative, Banggi assemblyman Datuk Abd Mijul Unaini.
“In fact, there was one boat for each village. I later learnt that one boat stopped working, so the two villages had to share one boat, thus the cramped boat in the viral photos,” he said, adding that he does not know where the boat supplied by the previous representative had gone to now.
Justin also rejected Khairul’s claim that applications for life jackets and boats had been made to the school.
I am not angry at Khairul for posting the photos. Maybe he wanted a ‘shortcut’ solution to get help from our new YB.
“That is not a bad thing. I just hope he will adjust some details about the school, because we have been trying our best to take care of the welfare of our students,” he said.
He also emphasised that the school has a plan for a long-term solution: building a hostel for students from the two villages.
“Even the land had been measured by the Sabah Credit Corporation, which will be funding the construction of the hostel.
“It is now awaiting approval from the Sabah Education Department,” he added. – The Vibes, January 17, 2022
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