One year grace period for ruling on black shoes

SIMPANG RENGGAM: A one year grace period will be given to all quarters before the ruling of black school shoes is implementable in all government schools.

Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik said the grace period was given for everyone to adjust to the new ruling and not to burden the parents with drastic implementation.

He said that during this period, there would be no disciplinary action taken on students who have failed to wear black school shoes.

“For the next year, those (parents) who have bought the white shoes, we would allow them (students) to wear the shoes again.

“We understand that changes could not be done by coercion, force and we try to understand so that everyone, especially parents and industry players, are happy. We will not do ‘hard landing’ but ‘soft landing’ because we do not want anybody to feel burdened and pressured,” he said.

He said this in response to the concerns from some quarters including shoe shop owners on the implementation of the directive.

Maszlee spoke to the press after officiating at the Simpang Renggam parliamentary office and meeting the government agencies at the office yesterday.

Last Thursday, Maszlee, who is also Simpang Renggam MP, announced that students nationwide would be required to wear black school shoes starting from next year’s school session.

The decision was made after taking into account requests from parents to the Ministry of Education since he became the minister.

On another issue, Maszlee called on the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (KPKT) to consider to continue the construction of a second fire station in Simpang Renggam, which had been stopped earlier.

“The one and only fire station in Simpang Renggam is in the city which mainly involved in accident cases, but as the location is far from the highway, they frequently arrive at the scene much later.

“However, the Simpang Renggam Council president informed us that we have land allocated for fire station construction, even the construction also has been planned but it was stopped, so we appeal to the KPKT to hasten the reconstruction of the fire station in Simpang Renggam,” he said. - Bernama