The Save Our School (SOS) committee has launched a postcard campaign appealing to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to reopen the SJK (C) Damansara in Petaling Jaya next year.

This is also intended to heighten efforts to reopen the original school - ordered closed by the Education Ministry in 2001, ostensibly because it no longer provided a "conducive learning environment".

The postcard carries a trilingual slogan saying 'Please listen to us' and a message to the premier to reopen the school, which was closed about four years ago.

The postcard features a photograph of Abdullah kissing a baby, as well as of two sombre-faced students wearing the 'SOS Damansara' T-shirt.

"We hope Pak Lah will listen to the true voices of the public in relation to the closure of the school - we want the school to be reopened in 2005," said committee chairperson Yong Yoke Sung when contacted.

He said the committee has printed an initial batch of 10,000 postcards to be distributed.

Campaign revived

Publicity chief Choong Pai Chee said the campaign is also meant to reactivate the campaign and to reach out to more supporters.

"We will distribute the postcards in markets and during various events," she said, adding that the campaign will go on until the end of the year.

In 2001, the 1,430 students of the original Damansara school were told to relocate to the 'branch school' built in Tropicana, several kilometres away. The original premises were closed.

Since then, several parents have protested by sending their children to the school, which now operates out of air-conditioned containers in the compound of a neighbouring temple.

In a parliamentary written reply last month, Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the ministry has considered several proposals to find new uses for the former premises.

This includes a proposal by the Selangor Education Department to turn it into a teachers' activity centre, curriculum centre, or a store for the department's documents.