For five years, a Chinese primary school in Kuala Lumpur has been collecting cobwebs and dust as concerned groups fight for its existence.

Today, the chatter and laughter of children once again echoed through the classrooms in the75-year-old building.

However, this new lease of life will only last for a week or so.

Fifty-six pupils from SRJK (C) Damansara moved into their old school when a storm damaged their makeshift classrooms located at a nearby temple last Thursday.

Security personnel stationed at the school by the education ministry, sympathetic to their plight, allowed the pupils and 12 teachers, including headmistress Wong Chin Lee, to occupy the building on a temporary basis.

The school had been vacant since 2001 after it was closed down by the ministry, which had constructed a new building sited about 4km away.

However, a group of parents disagreed with the relocation and continued to school their children in the makeshift classrooms housed in air-conditioned containers.

The struggle

Since then, together with concerned groups, they formed the Save our School (SOS Damansara) committee to have the old school reopened.

They claimed that there was a shortage of Chinesebased primary schools in the area and therefore the ministry should not close the SRJK (C) Damansara built in 1930.

Present to escort the pupils into their old school building this morning was SOS Damansara chairperson Yong Yoke Sung (photo:right).

Speaking to reporters later, he said repair works on the makeshift classrooms will only be completed next week.

Yong said his colleagues and him had submitted an application letter to Education Minister Hishamuddin Hussein's office to use the original school building for a week.

A copy of the letter was also submitted to the Selangor education department.

SOS Damansara executive secretary Tan Xiang Chen said she telephoned Deputy Education Minister Hon Choon Kim yesterday seeking for an appointment but the latter, according to her, kept saying: "What is there to be discussed".

No water, eletricity supply

SRJK(C) Damansara has no electricity or water supply forcing the committee to bring water from the temple.

Since last December, the state education department had also barred committee members from carrying out cleaning work in the school.

Pupils were also not allowed to use the school playground for sports and extra-curricular activities.

The committee had raised its grouses with Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Hopes were renewed last September when the ministry - in its first official letter to the committee after five years - said it will study the request to reopen the school.

However, no further response has come from the ministry.