39 per cent of MALAYSIAN national schools are without toilet facilities

UMNO has failed the poor Malays

Isn’t it mind-boggling that nearly 39 per cent of the national schools are without toilet facilities?
by P Ramakrishnan
Aliran Monthly Vol 25 (2005): Issue 7


How could UMNO have tolerated this lack of progress over 15 years when no one else has dominated the government and the bureaucracy?

P Ramakrishnan

UMNO has failed the poor Malays. Not just failed them but failed miserably.

All the rhetoric and keris wielding that we witnessed at the recent UMNO General Assembly can’t hide this fact. All the sloganeering and bravado on behalf of the Malays will not legitimise these leaders as having truly struggled to advance the lot of the majority Malays who are poor and deserving help.

Pathetic state of affairs

Let’s for a moment forget the `30 per cent equity’ issue and the call to resuscitate the New Economic Policy.

Let’s just take a mundane issue of everyday living. The Education Minister revealed that out of 4,036 national schools, 794 were without electricity and 1,555 without toilet facilities.

Isn’t this staggering? Nearly 20 per cent of the national schools are without electricity. How is this possible when the government has repeatedly emphasised the need for e-knowledge? We were bent on building computer labs for schools and expanding computer literacy among children. How were these schools and their students “excluded” from the national policy? How is it that their interests did not feature at all in implementation?

Isn’t it mind-boggling that nearly 39 per cent of the national schools are without toilet facilities. How do their students wash themselves, ease themselves and keep themselves clean? When schools are expected to teach cleanliness and the need to eradicate diseases, how was this neglect tolerated?

We need to know how this pathetic state of affairs arose. Practically all those schools were rural schools, mostly attended by poor Malay children. Was it a lack of expertise that led to those schools being deprived of electricity and toilet facilities? Was it a shortage of funds and allocations? Was it indifference to the education of rural children?

How did UMNO, ever ready to advance every Malay interest, permit this neglect. Practically every Education Minister since Merdeka has come from UMNO. Every Finance Minister after Tan Siew Sin was an UMNO man.

If all those ministers couldn’t solve the problems faced by rural schools after so many years - so many years of prosperity at that - why should UMNO continue to talk about rural poverty, Malay relative backwardness and lack of bumiputera advancement?

Why should UMNO use that dismal situation of under-provided schools and their obvious failure to make emotional statements about how Malays must rally around their sole protector, UMNO?

Two extremes

In the name of the NEP and improving the economic position of the Malay community, enormous amounts of resources were dispensed by way of contracts, projects, shares, licences, permits, subsidies and other forms of assistance.

Has that wealth, meant to realise what some call the “Malay agenda”, trickled down to the rural schools and the rural students? Or has the re-distribution only benefited cronies and well-connected elites – rather than the deserving children of fisher folk and farmers?

When rural schools can’t be properly equipped with electricity and toilet facilities, what’s the point of talking about “30 per cent equity”, “APs” and the “new national agenda”?

Or are we talking about two sets of standards – one towering set for well-connected wannabees and one depressingly low set for the cable-less ordinaries?

How else can we see such extremes in fortunes?

On the one hand, there are individuals who, without claims to expertise or experience, have been granted thousands of “APs” worth tens of millions of ringgit.

On the other hand, there are rural children who have every right to be treated “equitably” but are deprived of electricity or toilets in schools that are supposed to help them gain education and expertise.

Poor, cable-less Malays

If UMNO leaders want to question why the Malay share of corporate equity has not moved upwards in 15 years, from 18.7 per cent in 1988, they should come clean on many counts.

Why hasn’t the Malay share risen, or moved at all, despite so much government effort and resources being devoted to reaching the magical “30 per cent” figure?

Is it credible for them even to keep using such figures to justify such a statistical stagnation?

How could UMNO have tolerated this lack of progress over 15 years when no one else has dominated the government and the bureaucracy?

Can the responsibility be placed on the shoulders of other communities, including most of all, the unconnected, cable-less among them?

Or was it because what was proclaimed to be the “Malay agenda” was captured by “private agendas” that UMNO leaders would rather not discuss in public?

UMNO should stop shouting slogans and instead solve the genuine problems of the genuinely deserving poor. UMNO leaders should stop wielding kerises and instead unplug connections between politics and business.

Until then, why shouldn’t the neglected think that UMNO leaders don’t or can’t or won’t safeguard the real welfare of poor but deserving Malays?