Fatimah doesn’t fancy giving awards on ad-hoc basis

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KUCHING: They may have risked their lives to save an accident victim from being burnt to death when his car caught fire recently, but the trio must not expect any award for their heroic act any time soon.

Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah, when commenting on their bravery yesterday, said giving awards to individuals who risked their lives to save others can be given a thought.

However, she said, it would be quite difficult to actually present the award on an ad-hoc basis considering that in everyday life, there would always be an act of heroism done by caring people.

“There are many heroes among us, people who do heroic acts. We know that things happen around us. We saw and heard people who voluntarily did a responsible humane act in the community. People like these exist among us.

“What are we going to do about it? This is a good question which all of us should think of together. In our human capital development, we want to produce people with good values and the recent incident is an example of people with positive values.

“How are we going to continuously flourish these good values? Would awards help to enrich these values?” Fatimah, who is also Dalat assemblywoman, told reporters when met after the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting here.

At 11.50 pm Thursday, three friends – 24-year-old Haidi of Kpg Kuap, 23-year-old Shaiful of Kpg Stakan Melayu and a 19-year-old man from Kpg Kuap – were drinking at a nearby coffeeshop when they heard an explosion.

They rushed to the road and saw a car on fire. They immediately went to a petrol station to get hold of a fire extinguisher and tried to put out the fire, but to no avail.

With great risk to themselves, the trio managed to pull out the driver – 36-year-old Kong Soon Lim – and placed him by the roadside away from the blaze.

By then, Kong had sustained burns all over his body. He was later brought by an ambulance to Sarawak General Hospital. The car was believed to have gone out of control as it passed the petrol station and swerved to the roadside, hit a divider and turned turtle in the middle of the road.

An explosion followed and the car caught fire.