Promise of help

Support pledged for lower secondary school and hostels to meet needs of Lun Bawang community

A SENIOR official from the Education Ministry last week saw for herself the acute lack of learning facilities at a remote primary school and the sacrifices made by teachers assigned to serve in the rural areas of the state.

During a visit to SKK Ba Kelalan in the highlands of northern Sarawak, Dato Hajah Noor Rezan Bapoo Hashim, deputy director general of Education (Operations) learned of the urgent need to build a lower secondary school and hostels in the area.

Empathising with the hardships faced by the teachers, pupils and parents, she pledged her support for the proposal to upgrade the facilities in the school.

She was also impressed by SKK Ba Kelalan’s initiative to teach love and respect for the environment by arranging jungle excursions for the pupils and encouraging them to learn about insects, plants, soil conditions, animals and even domestic skills.

Noor Rezan had to endure a bumpy nine-hour road journey from Lawas to get to the primary school.

Accompanied by a few Ministry officials, she deliberately chose to travel to her destination along a long and winding road in a 4×4 vehicle.

With the current wet season, the road, formed mostly by old logging tracks, is made all the more difficult to negotiate when many depressed parts become treacherous and almost impassable due to heavy downpours and hilly terrain.

Even during the dry season, it takes experienced drivers five to six hours to complete the journey.

Noor Rezan could have opted for the easier travel mode — a 40-minute flight by MASwings from Lawas — or Miri which is slightly farther.

But in the end, she was happy with the overland drive and left with many favourable impressions of the school and the supportive spirit of the Ba Kelalan community.

On arrival, her team was given a warm welcome by a long line of SKK Ba Kelalan pupils.

The villagers also put up dance and bas suling (flute) performances for the occasion.

Later, the ministry officials and guests, including community leaders, department heads and teachers, were entertained by the pupils to traditional dances and their unique 1Malaysia “choral speaking.”

In his welcome address, the headmaster, Pudun Tadam, said so far, a total of 1,321 persons had been educated at the primary school.

One went on to become an MP while two others were elected to the State Legislative Assembly.

One of the latter was appointed a deputy minister in the State Cabinet.

Pudun disclosed two of the school’s former pupils are now serving in the Chief Minister’s Office, another from a village in the area is with the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) of the Prime Minister’s Department while a fourth is the first from the Lun Bawang community to pursue a course at Harvard University in the US.

“Although the community here is small and remotely located, it has vast human resource potential to be tapped for the state and the nation.

“That’s why the school dares to dream dreams that others consider impossible to achieve. Our slogan is ‘One Legacy, One Destiny’.”

Pudun told the visitors the school’s long-term vision is to produce scientists from Be Kalalan by 2030.

He said the school began conducting pre-school classes in 2009 and these have been progressing very well since.

Pudun also took the opportunity to bring to the attention of the Ministry officials the need to build a lower secondary school in the area.

He said it was not only costly for parents to send their children to the town for secondary education but also disadvantageous for the children to be separated from their parents “at this young transitional period of their lives”.

He also touched on the “great difficulty” of parents in sending their children to pre-school classes from the villages, saying in some cases, they had to walk four hours to and fro each day.

For this reason, he requested the Ministry to consider building hostels and increasing the allowance for each pre-school pupil to RM3.50 to compensate for the transport problem and the remoteness of the villages.

He also asked for the infrastructure of SKK Ba Kelalan to be upgraded or expanded.

Presently, the school has 109 pupils with 13 teachers and eight non-academic staff.

It has won many awards, including the Commonwealth Education Good Practice Award in 2009, the Chief Minister’s Award, the School of Excellence Award and the National Hope School Award last year.

In her address, Noor Rezan assured she would look into the proposal to build a lower secondary school and hostels in the area as she realised inadequacy of learning facilities and the problems facing the teaching staff and pupils in SKK Ba Kelalan had to be addressed.

She recognised the importance of getting pre-schoolers to stay in a hostel near the school because of the long distance between their villages and the school.

On a brighter note, she was impressed with the primary school’s efforts to raise awareness of environmental preservation among its pupils, and the extent of community involvement in affairs of the school.

She acknowledged that community involvement was “a very effective model and a distinguished factor” for the success of the school that had won so many awards in the past.

Noor Rezan also emphasised the need for UPSR achievers from the Ba Kelalan area to enroll in fully residential schools, the nearest being SM Sains Miri or Tuanku Haji Bujang College also in Miri.

She congratulated Pudun and Cikgu Sang Sigar and their fellow teachers on bringing SKK Ba Kelalan to what it is today, saying it was not the material gains that mattered but the good leadership.

Noor Rezan encouraged Pudun to share his experience with other schools so that they too could adopt some of the learning approaches of SKK Ba Kelalan.

Among those who accompanied her were Zulkarnai Fauzi, chief assistant director (pre-school management) and community leaders, Pak Tagal Paran, owner of the Apple Orchard and the Apple Lodge, and Penghulu George Sigar who maintains customary rights and is a judge of the local Native Court.

The residents of Ba Kelalan which comes under the administration of Lawas District, belong to the Lun Bawang tribe living in 10 villages in a valley 973 metres above sea level.

The villages are Buduk Bui, Long Langai, Long Lemutut, Long Ritan, Long Rusu, Buduk Aru, Long Rangat, Pa Tawing, Buduk Nur and Long Ubau.

Mainly because of the difficult terrain, these villages are isolated.
Last year, the federal government approved RM50 million for the construction of the first phase of a road from Lawas to Ba Kelalan.