Ku Nan, have some shame in the month of Ramadan - Ravinder Singh

"Bertaubat-lah dalam bulan Ramadan, jangan memperbodohkan orang".

"The headmaster wants to protect the children from being exposed to the sun, so he purposely put the students in the shower room" said Ku Nan who promised to defend the SK Seri Pristina headmaster if his actions were right.

What if his actions were wrong? Silence, shove under the carpet?  

Ku Nan, the first part of your statement is a big, fat, shameless lie and the second part is true.

The second part is true because any reasonable person can see that "purposely" putting the children in the toilet-cum-canteen was a pre-planned act to be implemented upon the start of Ramadan with the sole purpose of hiding those having their food, as if to protect the sanctity of Ramadan by ensuring no one is seen eating in the school.

Similar, though not exactly the same problems have arisen in the past in other schools where non-Muslim students were shooed away from the canteen area. SK Seri Pristina beat them all with its novel idea.

This was a fool-proof way of ensuring they will not be seen eating by anyone, for under the trees they could still be seen.  

"The children needed to be protected from the sun" - why?

Does this phenomena of the canteen being roofless happen only in Ramadhan?

So the sun does not burn the students (Malay and non-Malay) having their meals in the canteen during the rest of the year?

Which is hotter, the morning sun or the afternoon sun when school is dismissed and children walk in the blazing sun on their way home?

This is not a joking or "lawak-lawak" matter. Don't be sarcastic.

Recess is between 10:00am to 11:00am. At what height is the sun at this time, and even if the sun does get a few feet into one side of the dining area, what about the rest of the canteen space?

Why cordon off the whole canteen area?

What is wrong even if the Muslim children sit and relax in the canteen for a while?

Not enough with the stories of the headmaster and PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) chairman, the deputy education minister and other education department officials, a few days ago Major Hardeep Singh, a member of the PTA, had the temerity to tell us that using the shower room as an extension to the canteen at SK Seri Pristana was going to be a permanent arrangement.  

He said the four-year-old school could not cope with the enrolment and had decided on this move in March at the association's annual general meeting.

And the PTA chairman Hussein Mohd Ariff acknowledged that this arrangement had been in effect since March when pupils were ordered to use the shower room to have their recess meals.

"The canteen was not closed for 'renovations' then. It was still open," said Hussein.

Do these people have no shame flip-flopping on their stories, or do they think the public has no memory?  

Do all these people realise that they are actually hitting at the architects who planned the school building?

They are saying that the architects were incompetent persons who did not provide enough canteen space to accommodate at least half of the students in each school session.

On one hand, it has been confirmed that the canteen can accommodate 500 students at a time. We are also told there are about 600 to 700 students in each session - morning and afternoon.

Then how can the canteen be too small if recess is broken into two sessions?

In designing buildings, architects have a formula for space requirements for each person. Buildings for different purposes have different requirements. If 10 square feet per child is allocated for a school canteen, the 500 capacity canteen should have a floor area of 5,000 square feet, i.e. approximately the size of a basketball court.

Could reporters please verify the actual floor area of the canteen?

Government projects are handled by the JKR, and it has a section in charge of school buildings. Could this section in the JKR please tell us why the canteen was built so small that it cannot accommodate all the children?

Is it really too small? Was any feedback given to the JKR?

The school sits on several acres of land, so why should the canteen be so small? How many square feet of canteen space was allocated per child?   

If canteen space is really so tight, it can be maximized by using appropriate furniture.

Why use tables that are 3 feet wide when 2 foot wide tables would be very comfortable for a school canteen? Why use chairs with backrests when the best sitting in school canteens is on long benches?       

It's not difficult to get to the bottom of this. The key is the canteen floor space available for arranging tables and benches; the type of canteen furniture for children to use; the actual number of children in the morning and afternoon school sessions.

If reporters could get these facts, then the lie could be nailed.     

Nailing the lie is important to make people accountable for what they do and say. This is one part of the fiasco that can be established.

The other is simply inexcusable, and needs no "investigation", i.e. hiding the children in the toilet-cum-canteen. The test for the second, if any is required, would be whether God-fearing Malay parents could honestly say that they would not object to the school asking their children to eat in that toilet-cum-canteen which somehow was good enough for the PTA members to "buka puasa" in.