All sides agree issue of student safety needs to be taken seriously

KUCHING: A meeting between the police, education department and the Federation of Boards of Management for Kuching and Samarahan Divisions Chinese Primary Schools was held yesterday at the Chinese primary school where an alleged abduction attempt is said to have taken place.

The three-party meeting was held following a report in the media where a father claimed that lax security at the school nearly resulted in his nine-year-old daughter being abducted by an unknown person on Tuesday morning.

The police district management chief DSP Liew Pheck Ha and Sergeant Major Simon Low of the forensics unit represented the police while the federation was represented by its president Liu Thian Leong in the two-hour long discussion, which was also attended by school officials.

Liew later told reporters that as a result of the meeting, all sides agreed that the issue of student safety needed to be taken seriously and that the school needed to take extra precautionary measures to ensure the safety of its pupils.

She went on to say that among one of the recommendations made was to lock the main gate of the school during recess time to prevent outsiders from entering.

Liew added that even though this could cause inconvenience to parents coming to see their children, such measure was necessary to ensure the safety of the pupils. She hoped that parents would understand and cooperate so that incidents of such nature would not occur in the future.

The federation, meanwhile, pledged to work closely with the police and education department regarding student safety and urged for the cooperation of parents and the school board in dealing with the issue of safety.