“It’s the moral responsibility of the government of the day to do so,” said Batu Kawan MP Kasthuri Patto in a statement.

Kasthuri was taking her cue from Najib’s statement three days ago and a reply on Tuesday in response to her question in Parliament.

“Najib announced a well-known ‘apam-balik’ holistic National Blueprint for Indians,” she noted. “This is for empowerment of the Indian community.”

Meanwhile, she lamented, the Ministry of Education kept passing the buck on the building of the first Tamil secondary school in the country. “Najib mentioned that all national Tamil primary schools should have pre-school facilities.”

“There was no mention of Tamil secondary schools.”

She claimed there was no political will on the part of the Education Minister to engage with the Penang Government, for example, when land has been set aside for a Tamil secondary school in the state.

“The Ministry has neither intention nor plan to empower children in Malaysia,” said Kasthuri. “The Ministry should honour, save and keep their mother tongues alive, in this case, the Tamil language.”

“There already exists Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan for Chinese schools.”

The reply in Parliament, she resumed, was that Section 30 (1) of the Education Act 1996 (Act 550) only allowed for Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK). “The Ministry said that a Tamil secondary school was nowhere in the Education Act 1996.”

Section 30(1) in fact states: “It shall be the duty of the Minister to provide secondary education in the following national secondary schools: academic secondary; technical; and secondary schools as the Minister may from time to time determine”, pointed out Kasthuri.

Section 31 states that for the “establishment and maintenance of secondary schools, subject to the provisions of this Act, the Minister may establish and maintain any of the schools described in Section 30”, she added.