Alumni hoping for royal intervention
Ex-students and staff appeal to Regent of Pahang to help retain St Thomas name
KUANTAN: Former students and teachers of St Thomas primary and secondary schools are hoping that the Regent of Pahang, an alumnus himself, will intervene in the renaming of the school.
“We appeal to Tengku Mahkota Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah to uphold and protect the school’s legacy,” said Save St Thomas ad hoc committee chairman Abdul Rahman Abdul Razak.
“St Thomas is among the top schools in Pahang and the country. It is the pride of Kuantan and we wish to see the St Thomas name retained,” he said at a St Thomas reunion dinner on Saturday night.
“The 30,000 former students of the school, founded by Father Louis Guittat in 1950, will no longer have a school to visit if St Thomas is closed down,” he said.
A total of RM56mil has been granted for the construction of a new complex in Kemunting here to house the schools but the name would be changed to Sekolah Mahkota Abdullah.
The St Thomas primary and secondary schools are now sharing facilities with SK Teruntum and SMK Sultan Abu Bakar respectively.
St Thomas vacated its premises in Jalan Gambut in 2014 after the school land was returned to the St Thomas Church following a legal tussle between the Government and the church in 2012.
Deputy Education Minister Datuk P. Kamalanathan said the Education Department has the right to choose the name for the new schools when the Kemunting facilities are ready as the St Thomas schools were not being relocated.
He added that the (St Thomas) schools ended when the land was given back.