By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary- General and MP for Petaling, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Saturday, Oct. 3, 1981:
Call for the Walkathon Donation Forms given to school pupils for the Education Department Sports Carnival should be collected back immediately from all pupils or I will propose a $10 cut of salary of the Director of Education, Selangor, in Parliament.
Despite my call to the Education Minister, Dr. Sulaiman Daud, to countermand the Selangor Education Department circular sending primary school pupils into the streets to collect donations for a Education Department Sports Carnival, nothing has been done.
The Selangor Education Department Director, Encik Mohamad Diah, said yesterday that action would be taken against any headmaster who compels schoolchildren to collect money through walkathons to raise funds for the Sports Carnival being hosted by the Selangor Education Services Sports and Cultural Association.
This is not good enough, for in principle, school children should never have been issued with walkathon donation forms to collect funds for a project which is to be participated only by Education Department officials and teachers.
If anyone is to go out onto the streets to collect the donations, it must be the Education Department officials and teachers, and not the students. It is a most unhealthy and undesirable precedent to send school children into the streets go expose their limbs and lives to danger to collect funds for something which has nothing whatsoever to do with them.
I am not suggesting the cancellation of the Sports Carnival for the Education Department officials and teachers, which is a good idea, but which must be funded by proper means without exploiting the students.
I dall on the Selangor Director of Education, Encik Mohamed Diah, to immediately withdraw the walkathon circulars sent out to the school pupils with a directive that school children would henceforth not be required to collect walkathon donations for the Sports Carnival.
I have with me a copy of the Walkathon donation form which bears the signature of the Mhd. Diah bin Haji himself both as Selangor Director of Education and Yang di Pertua of the Persatuan Sukan and Kebudayaan Perkhidmantan Pelajaran, Selangor. Who will believe that there is no element of coercion or duress involved?
If Incik Mohd. Diah is not prepared to recall the walkathon forms all Selangor students with the new directive that they are not required to go and collect donations for the Sports Carnival, then I propose to move a motion in the forthcoming budget meeting of Parliament to cut the salary of the Selangor Director of Education by $10 to highlight this shocking incident and the gross insensitivity of the top education department officials.