National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) president Aminuddin Awang said it was unfair to expect parent-teacher associations (PTAs) to bear the cost of installing these lockers as not all of them could afford to do so.

“Indeed, the government should make special allocation to install lockers in schools as it will enable students to leave behind items that they do not need to carry home.

“It is however not fair to hand over this responsibility to the PTAs as there are more than 10,200 schools nationwide, and not all the PTAs are financially able to do so, ” he told FMT.

While acknowledging that the government was facing financial constraints at present, Aminuddin said efforts to install these lockers could be made in stages.

He said parents also needed to play their role by making inspections from time to time to ensure their children did not carry unnecessary items to school.

He added that the issue of heavy school bags was hardly new and had been discussed for a long time.

Recently, M Sukumaran, chairman of the SJK (T) Sungai Renggam PTA in Section 18, Shah Alam, had said that the education ministry’s proposal for PTAs to shoulder the cost of the lockers was “very impractical”.

This came after a report by FMT on a Form 5 student, Nurul Hanim Fazwin, 17, who had to undergo corrective surgery after she developed an “S” spine.

Her father, Mohd Zaqrul Razmal Mohd Podzi, a paediatrician, attributed the condition, known as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, to the heavy school bag she had been lugging around for many years.