Chinese education group Jiao Zong has denied that it and sister group Dong Zong gave short notice to the Education Ministry prior to handing a memorandum on Friday.
The two groups had complained that they were made to wait for more than an hour that day, but the Education Ministry said it was given notice only an hour before.
When met at the sidelines of the MCA annual general meeting today, Jiao Zong president Ong Chiow Chuen said the appointment was made on Thursday.
"We informed them on Thursday... We made multiple calls from Nov 28. You see we have been in contact with (Education Minister Maszlee Malik's) secretary," Ong told reporters, while showing his call records.
He also said that he had sent a WhatsApp message to Maszlee's secretary on Thursday morning.
"(But) he did not respond until Friday... It's wrong to say no prior request for an appointment had been made. We have the WhatsApp (message)," he said.
Yesterday, The Star cited an unnamed ministry officer as saying that they had only received notice from Dong Zong and Jiao Zong at 2pm.
At the time, the officer said most top level officers were in a post-cabinet meeting, and they did not want to send a low ranking officer to meet the education groups to avoid upsetting them.
The groups had submitted a memorandum calling for Chinese school boards to be allowed to decide on teaching Jawi lessons in primary schools.
In August, the government drew flak for announcing the introduction of khat (Jawi calligraphy) for Year 4 vernacular school pupils next year.
Later, the government decided to decrease the Jawi script lesson from six pages to three pages and announced that it would only be implemented with the agreement of parent-teacher associations (PTA) and other parents.
However, the educationist group was not happy that the school boards were not listed as decision-makers as well in the implementation of teaching Jawi lessons. In Sabah and Sarawak, some of the schools do not have PTAs. - Mkini
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