Headmasters Sent to Principal's Office

About two to three months ago, the issue of corrupted headmasters came to the fore with a certain businessman, Mr Ong Koh Hou offered RM500,000 as a reward to parties who are able to come up with evidence proving the guilt of these principals. Of course, the headmasters went beserk with all sorts of unreasonable threats and the Minister of Education claims it's not his problem.

And I thought that was the end of the story. Nothing much was published in the papers anymore and I suspected that everything was just swept under the carpet. But hey, it looks like I thought wrong. The game is pretty much still in play. :)

The New Straits Times reported on Saturday that

[t]wo months of homework involving investigations into allegations of graft of about RM100 million annually by Chinese primary school headmasters has yielded results. Two boxes of evidence, gathered from, among others, school committees, parent- teachers associations and parents, were handed to the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA)...

Apparently the lucrative reward offered attracted evidence from book distributors, computer wholesalers, tour agencies and stationery dealers. Mr Ong, who is a protem adviser to the newly founded Malaysia Chinese Schools' Parents Association (MCSPA) handed over the evidence to the authorities.

"Some of the evidence from certain schools is complete while some other
evidence is partially complete. But overall, there is more than enough for the ACA to act."

He said more evidence would be compiled for submission to the ACA sometime after Sept 1.

Malaysiakini also published a similar report on the matter. In it, the protem deputy chairperson, Teh Hon Seng clarified that "the finances involved in Chinese primary schools amount to RM500 million (annually). This include money for books, stationery, tuition, computer classes and extra curricular activities".

He further alleged that "over RM100 million is being siphoned from the 1,288 Chinese primary schools nationwide".

The amounts involved are clearly sizeable on a cumulative basis and is a clear betrayal of the trust placed by the school children and their parents on the headmaster. Let's see further actions taken by the ACA on this issue. Hopefully it won't take too long for MCSPA has done plenty of homework on their behalf.