Press Statement (2) by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, in PJ on 25th Sept. 1984
DAP gravely concerned at the increasing incidence of crimes involving students in Schools and calls for a nation-wide review and solution of the problem
I am very seriously concerned at the increasing incidence of crime involving students in schools, which seem to becoming a grave problem in schools in various parts of the country.
The Malay Malay reported today that police are expected to pick up three or four students of the Sekolah Menengah Taman Desa in Jalan Kelang Lama who assaulted the head prefect of the afternoon session last week.
The head prefect, a Form One student, had to undergo surgery last week after he was badly beaten up by a group of boys whom he had caught gambling in the school compound. The victim had to undergo emergency surgery for a fractured nose bone and is now recuperating at the Universiti Hospital.
In my visits around the country, I have been hearing about the breakdown of school discipline, to the extent that criminal activities involving students had become a very big problem. There had been assault, involving gangsterism, to the extent that teachers are intimidated into silence instead of coming forward to restore discipline among the students in the schools.
In one incident in a Batu Pahat school, the attempted rape of a girl student in a co-educational school was hushed up, instead of police action being taken.
The weak and ineffective action taken by the school authorities, purportedly to ‘protect the good name’ of the schools, will not help to check this dangerous trend of growing number of incidence of crime in schools.
The Sekolah Menengah Taman Desa affair is only the tip of an iceberg. I call on the Minister of Education, Datuk Abdullah Badawi, to give serious personal attention to this problem, and to order a nation-wide review and solution to this problem if unchecked, would expose students at tender age to criminal tendencies and activities.