Water woe

Water woe: too little                  24/6/2013

[SMK Suai teachers and boarders a miserable lot]

Alamak!   What a curse!   What a pity!  What a shame!   Water is one of the 3 most important and indispensible elements to keep a person alive.  Why are our SMK Suai teachers and boarders  facing the shortage of water and all the inconveniences to date 20 June, 2013?  (The Borneo Post.  Pg24.

Here I would like to repeat what has been reported because just in case someone important /not important is too lazy to refer to the newspaper for detailed report.  I see it an illness of our BN government that needs people’s attention from whole-wide Malaysia hoping to get urgent services for the school. 

Let’s scream, shout, shrill, squeal, squeak, shriek ……….for them to get the attention and services they deserve.   They have been  facing dry taps for 3 months.  The low water pressure has persisted for 10 years!  That means for the past ten years, they face this inconsistent supply of water in silence. 

The new water plant project does not help at all because of the piping problems.  I guess the company must have used the irrelevant size of the pipe to save money and cost.  Hee………..(sinister way) .    Hence,  I hope some VIPs, be they BN/PR, to investigate the matter for good. 

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Miri:  They don’t have water to cook meals.  They don’t have water to drink.  They don’t have water to bathe.  And yes, they smell.

        This situation is not fiction, but is happening in SMK Suai in Niah. 

        The sad thing is that the school’s more than 600 teachers and boarders have been simmering in this hellish condition for the past three months when their water taps dried up.

        Principal Abu Saran Sahari is at wits’ end on how to deal with this arid situation.

        He is contemplating sending the students home and to ask them to come to school on a daily basis.

        “But this will give rise to another problem because for many students, their houses are not near,” he told The Borneo Post yesterday.

        Abu Saran added that the situation had been nightmarish for him because the poor living condition had resulted in the grades of students, notably the PMR students, plummeting in recent months.

        “The trial result dropped from 60% passing rate to only 40%.  I don not blame the students for the drop because I know they are stressed out by this water shortage problem.  Just imagine having live without water day-in-day-out.”

        Abu Saran said the Public Works Department (PWD) had been sending takers to the school for the past three months but the service had been erratic and the amount insufficient at times.

        “The tankers should send at least five tanks of water to the school daily because there are almost 600 boarding students here.  But on some days, we get only 2 tankers sent, and, sometimes, no tankers came!” 

        “Take today, for instance, it is already late afternoon and we are out of water.  The tankers have not arrived, and my students and teachers do not even have a drop of water for cooking and drinking.”

        “How are they supposed to survive like this?” asked Abu Saran, who added that sometimes the students and teachers had no choice but to hitch a ride to Spupok to buy mineral water.

        He appealed to the government to do something about this quickly as the students and teachers could not cope with this burden much longer.  He said the school had been facing problems of low water pressure since it was established more than 10 years ago.

        This led to the implementation of a new water plant project last year, but the problem remained.

        He added that several nearby villagers were also experiencing  water problems which are believed to be due to the piping issues under the new water plant project.

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It is very important for the leaders, be they principals of the schools, the chiefs of the long / short houses, local leaders……… to let the public know their problems if they fail to resolve them themselves.   We should make good use of People’s Power to force and pressure the BN government to action.    

        I hope PR leaders work harder and never push people away when they come for your help.  If you cannot help them yourself alone, ally others to help the poor people in need.  Never push them away in anyway, please.