Locker-for-rent in schools above board, says company

 

The lockers the company has installed in some schools in the Klang Valley. (Gamma Epsilon Square Sdn Bhd pic)

PETALING JAYA: The company offering the rent-a-locker to schools in the Klang Valley has clarified that its projects were carried out with the consent of the schools’ parent-teacher associations and there is nothing to hide.

The managing director of Gamma Epsilon Square Sdn Bhd, Ahmad Syahrin Mohd Raslan, said they have been in business since 2013 and have installed more than 3,000 lockers in about 30 schools.

He said this has successfully helped reduce the weight of schoolbags.

He was clarifying an FMT report last month which quoted parents and the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) as saying that they disagreed with the move.

Syahrin said the plan, which requires students to pay RM120 each year as rental, including a RM10 refundable deposit, for the lockers on a voluntary basis, had actually helped the students lighten the burden of heavy schoolbags substantially.

“The idea is to work with schools to rent out the lockers for a certain number of years before handing them over to the schools. Until such time, we carry out maintenance on the lockers three times a year. We understand the country’s budget constraints.

“Therefore, we came up with this long-term plan which will be beneficial to the students, schools and the country to achieve the target of lighter schoolbags. Mind you, the schoolbags can really be heavy. We did a survey before making this offer,” he told FMT.

In the report, the NUTP and parents had asked why schools were outsourcing something which the government had announced it would do for free, alleging that there may be cronyism involved.

To this, Syahrin said the accusation of cronyism was unfair as his was a small company with a limited budget and making enough only to make ends meet.

If we were cronies of the government, it would have given us a budget to implement this. The RM37 million budget allocated for lockers in primary schools was only announced recently when we have been in the business for more than eight years.

“We made numerous attempts to contact the government on this locker plan but we have not got any information so far,” he said.

He said he felt offering the lockers for rent and eventually letting the schools own them was the best way to reduce the weight of schoolbags being lugged by schoolchildren, adding that they were open to hold discussions with anyone interested in their plan. - FMT