He said the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department’s statistics showed that there were almost 1,000 tahfiz schools in the country, but only 612 were registered.
Zahid, who is also home minister, said the unregistered schools were believed to have not registered out of fear that they did not meet the conditions for registration.
“This is because the Islamic departments have their own standards that should be met, such as fire safety features and adequate number of teachers. However, these schools still have to register for the safety of the students.”
Zahid said this to reporters after presenting 1,836 fire extinguishers to registered tahfiz institutions at the Perdana Putra Building here today.
Zahid, who had earlier chaired the Tahfiz School Task Force meeting, said that the task force had agreed to supply closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to tahfiz schools which were registered through the Taqwa Foundation, a social welfare organisation, and the Implementation Coordination Unit (ICU) in stages.
He said this would be further scrutinised as the installation of the CCTV cameras would be quite costly.
Zahid said the meeting also issued an instruction for all fire extinguishers presented today to be properly maintained and that the task force would ensure that all tahfiz schools would organise fire drills at least once a year under the Fire and Rescue Department’s supervision.
He also called for all quarters to give their support to the government in uplifting the status of tahfiz schools in the country.