Seri Pristana principal mulls legal action against shower-room incident whistleblower

The space at the locker room at Seri Pristana is now used for games. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Shafiq Safiee, July 3, 2014.

One year after the controversial incident at SK Seri Pristana in Sungai Buloh where non-Muslim students were ordered to eat in a shower room during Ramadan, the headmaster has finally broken his silence on it but he still refuses to apologise for issuing the directive.

He is instead mulling legal action against the whistleblower parent who had uploaded pictures of the non-Muslim students eating in the shower room during recess.

Mohd Nasir Mohd Noor, who will retire in August after a 34-year teaching career, said the actions of the whistleblower, who had taken pictures in the school compound without permission from the administration, had breached school rules.

"I might take legal action against the whistleblower after retiring," Nasir, who has been the principal of Seri Pristana for the last three years,  told The Malaysian Insider.

"She broke our rules although she registered herself as a visitor at the guard post. But she had to inform us before taking pictures, which she didn't do."

He said the parents were hasty in their condemnation of the school without discussing the matter with the administration and he found their actions regretful.

Downplaying the incident, he said: "This is not even an issue, but it happened this way because there were too many exploitations and many were saying things that were not true. Actually, the room was clean and this is what happened when no one talked to us.

"It's just that maybe I did not close the door to the changing room so people thought there were toilets in the room even though there were not," he said.

School principal Mohd Nasir Mohd Noor stands by his earlier decision and refuses to apologise. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Shafiq Safiee, July 3, 2014.Nasir also rubbished claims that parents of non-Muslim students had transferred their children out of the school.

He said only the whistleblower had taken her child out of the school while the number of students in Seri Pristana has increased to 1,600 from 1,400.

"Alhamdulillah, we are getting more students. When we first started the school, we only had about 500 students but now we have so many that we do not have enough classes for them. The number of non-Muslim students increased from 20 to 30," he said.

The school came under the spotlight last July during the Ramadan period after a parent, Guneswari Kelly, uploaded a picture on Facebook of non-Muslim students eating in the shower room during recess. The picture went viral and caused an uproar among the public.

Following that, 18 police reports were lodged against the school and its headmaster while the school replied with four reports of its own, claiming that the headmaster and several teachers were threatened.

Nasir, who claimed he had been slandered by parents and interest groups over his decision to use the school's changing room as a temporary canteen, was ordered by the Selangor Education Department to take a week’s leave at the height of the controversy.

The following month, Guneswari and two other non-Muslim parents were reported to have transferred their children out of the school following complaints of bullying and intimidation by teachers and other pupils after the issue blew up.

Nasir revealed that at the time he was also under a lot of pressure, including dealing with calls for him to resign or be transferred to another school.

Despite that, he stood his ground and insisted that he would not apologise.

"I have not apologised until now. If the education department or the ministry did, I don't know. But not me. It is not my intention to turn my back on the law. I had good intentions.

"I followed procedures as we already had a discussion with the management and Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). It was not as if they didn't know the room was being used since May when we decided to renovate the canteen," he added.

Nasir said that besides receiving death threats, he was also asked to be transferred elsewhere.

"I was asked to go to another school but I did not back down. In fact, when I met with Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh (Education Minister II), I brought along a list of my contributions to education for him to evaluate.

"I told him that I was not a teacher who just sits at home and goes to school. My achievements are more than that, in school, outside school and even to the party. If I had just kept quiet and followed procedures and got transferred out, people would say that I did something wrong," he added.

Nasir also expressed his disappointment with the Education Ministry which tend to transfer teachers out if there were issues.

"I know that getting transferred is a normal thing for teachers but not when it is used with the excuse of keeping the peace and to calm a situation. They should, instead, investigate first then take action.

"But when they do this, I dare say that the government's support will dwindle as educators do not feel protected," he added.

Nasir said the changing room in question has since been converted to a physical exercise room and non-Muslim students are using the canteen during this Ramadan period.

The school, he said, had also organised a unity programme following the incident, on the recommendation of the ministry.

"We had the event to calm things down and we invited parents and guardians. It was similar to a canteen day with many activities. It went smoothly and was fun," he said.

Nasir added that Seri Pristana has an impressive track record in academics and sports despite being opened only three years ago.

"We received many awards and we have been shortlisted to be chosen as a cluster school, which I plan to achieve before I retire on August 1.

"I always said that my vision was to make the school known in the state but I never thought it would be this famous," he said.

- TMI