Bicycles for pupils who have to walk 1km to school

Bicycles for pupils who have to walk 1km to school
By NIK NAIZI HUSIN
niknaizi@thestar.com.my


ROMPIN: Seventeen primary school pupils from Kampung Pantai Bernas here will no longer have excuses to skip school at SK Rompin, which is located across the river, after they were provided with a bicycle each to get to school.

For years, the pupils have had to take the boat ride every morning from the Pantai Bernas jetty to cross Sungai Rompin to reach the Kuala Rompin jetty.

They would then walk more than one kilometre to their school located in the heart of Rompin town.

According to school’s headmistress Noraizan Jamaludin, in a year, the average days of them being absent from the classes was 70 days, with laziness being the reason for them not wanting to go to school.

Noraizan said the matter was brought up in a meeting with Muadzam Shah assemblyman Datuk Maznah Mazlan recently and through her effort, Sime Darby Plantation Sdn Bhd decided to help out with its community project to provide bicycles to the pupils.

“For now, they cannot give us the excuse of being too lazy to walk to school,” Norazian said.

“Missing school 70 days in a year is bad.

“This makes up one third of the total number of schooling days and if this continues, their performance in school will be affected,” she said.

Maznah said the bicycles would be kept safely in the Marine Department office and the students could use it at anytime they wished as long as they returned them to the department after using them for the day.

“The bicycles are not theirs, and it can also be used by other students in following years,” she said.

Sime Darby Plantation’s Pahang zone office head Adahudissa Munei said the project of providing bicycles to students were within the company’s RM6,000 allocation.

“The bicycles play an important part as they will help the students not to skip class anymore. We will try to provide more if the need arises,” he said.