St Thomas School may be on its last lap

Jan 08, 2016

By K. Suthakar
As pupils enrol into Primary One, Jan 4, my thoughts wandered to St Thomas School, located in the heart of Kuantan.

The school was set up by Fr Louis Guittat Mep in 1950, with the Marist Brothers as the Director of the school.  Later the Brothers of St Gabriel took over the directorship of the school from 1960.

St Thomas was one of the premier schools in the east coast of Malaysia. The pupils excelled in studies and sports and there was almost equal representation from all races.

Parents were keen to enrol their children there, although there were other primary schools nearby. Now, doom and gloom have set among the pupils, parents, former students and teachers.

Following a court tussle with the Catholic Church, the Education Ministry told the primary and secondary schools to vacate the land.

The schools, located about 200m from the Pahang state secretariat, were sitting on prime 2.4ha land in Jalan Gambut.

It was a simple matter which could have been resolved amicably, but one thing led to another and the school’s future is now at stake.

The Church had wanted to take back the land in 2008 since the schools were occupying the land without paying a cent since 1950.

Apparently, the Church only wanted a token sum as rent which could even be RM1 from the authorities.

However, the state government struck back and gazetted the land acquisition on May 24, 2012.

The matter went to court after the Church sought an order to quash the Government’s decision. On Nov 16, 2012, the High Court granted leave to the titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur to challenge that decision.

The state government later dropped its bid to acquire the land.

But all of a sudden, the ministry announced that students would be moved out of the school premises.

The primary school was moved to SK Teruntum and the secondary school to SMK Sultan Abu Bakar in January 2014.

St Thomas School shared the facilities of the schools. Both the primary and secondary schools went into afternoon session at the temporary premises.

It was announced that a new site would be identified for both schools but nothing has materialised so far.

There is talk that the site would be near the Kuantan Municipal Council building in Tanah Puteh and that the new school would have a new name.

This means that St Thomas would become a page in history.

While the matter is dragging on, old boys, parents and former teachers are anxious over the possible “death” of the school.

Its thousands of students included Pahang royalty. The Tengku Mahkota of Pahang, Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah and his younger brother, Tengku Muda of Pahang, Tengku Abdul Rahman Sultan Ahmad Shah, were my seniors.

As for the Year One pupils of St Thomas who registered at the temporary premises at SK Teruntum, their school may be no more in a couple of years.--The Star