Student's civil suit against '7-month absentee' teacher to be heard on Nov 2

 

A student who sued her English teacher for allegedly failing to turn up for classes for seven months is scheduled to have her case heard on Nov 2.

Nafirah Siman (photo, centre), who is 20 years old now, initiated the lawsuit against teacher Jainal Jamran in October 2018.

The case was supposed to go on trial in May but had to be vacated to a later date due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In her suit, she alleged that Jainal did not turn up to teach English classes in 2015, when she was in Form 4 at SMK Taun Gusi, a school in Kota Belud, Sabah.

A statement from her representative said Nafirah was "extremely eager" for the case to proceed at the High Court in Kota Kinabalu.

The only defendant that succeeded to be struck out from the suit was the school itself.

Besides Jainal, the other defendants are the school's principal at the time, the Kota Belud district education officer, the Sabah State Education Department director, director-general of the Education Ministry, the education minister, and the government of Malaysia.

Nafirah's legal team had also succeeded in their applications for discovery and further and better particulars, through which she has received documents that were not voluntarily submitted by the defence.

In their statement of defence from Dec 2018, the defendants denied the allegation that Jainal had been missing from classes as alleged by Nafirah.

The statement from Nafirah's representatives said that cases involving errant teachers continue to plague Kota Belud.

It cited a case in which a primary school teacher in Kota Belud was sentenced to 11 years jail and two strokes of the cane for molesting two students aged eight and 15 years.

Meanwhile, it also highlighted a report in which Sabah education director Mistirine Radin said there were eight cases of Sabah school headmasters themselves being truant. - Mkini