A Tamil primary school in Perak is still waiting for computers for its 112 students despite making a request to the Education Ministry and Works Minister S Samy Vellu two years ago.

At present it has four broken computers and a teacher who is paid for not teaching anything, said M Kulasegaran (DAP-Ipoh Barat) today in Parliament.

Kulasegaran asked the Education Ministry if they were aware of longstanding request from the school during the Supplementary Supple (2006) Bill 2007 committee stage debate.

According to Kulasegaran, he was contacted by Dovenby estate primary school's parents-teachers association chairperson S Selvaraj about this matter.

"He said that this school in Sungai Siput paid its computer teacher two years worth of wages when the four computers in the school has been faulty for those two years.

"The teacher did not teach any computing at all for two years because fo the broken computers. How can this happen?" he asked the house.

Education Ministry Parliamentary Secretary P Komala Devi said the ministry was not informed of this matter but will nevertheless look into it.

"There may also be a possibility that the teacher was still paid because the subject of computing was taught part time instead of full time," she explained.

She said that the ministry will also investigate whether the computers came from the ministry to facilitate learning or it was from a private donor.

"If it came from the ministry then there is no excuse not to fix those computers," she told the half-empty Dewan Rakyat.

A real let down

S Selvaraj when contacted said he has been pushing for the computers to be fixed since he was made the PIBG chairperson in May 2006.

"I've already checked, it costs only RM1,000 to fix the computers but nobody from the ministry has responded to our letters and phone calls," he said.

He said he had raised this issue to Samy Vellu who is MP for Sungai Siput through his secretary last year.

"I have made calls and told him that this Tamil school in his constituency needs attention but like the ministry, we have heard nothing from him," he said.

"Can you imagine these children have been deprived of something so important in the world today like computer classes, just because nobody has come to their aid in fixing the computers?" he added.

Selvaraj also said that the computers were from the education ministry and not from private donors.

"The school children were happy when the government donated it to the school two years ago. This has been a real let down," he said.