KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — The declining rural population in Sarawak has claimed a new casualty: Chinese-language schools.

Despite a "door-to-door” recruitment drive last year and offering free transport, free meals and waiving school fees, SJK (C) Yong Cheng, a private vernacular school in Kampung Tulai along the Sibu-Bintangor Road attracted only one Primary One student this year, local daily The Borneo Post reported today.

"Last year, they went door-to-door across Kampung Tulai to recruit children for the school,” its headmistress Sim Siew King was quoted saying.

According to the report, the school will get another Year One pupil later, though it did not mention when. Two other newcomers are enrolled in kindergarten.

The school, which is an almost 20-minute drive from the Lanang Bridge, has a total of 30 pupils, including seven in kindergarten.

Sim said Primary Three had the largest number of pupils at six, with four pupils in Primary Two and Four respectively, five pupils in Primary Five and two pupils in Primary Six.

"In the kindergarten, we have one child in Year One and four in Year Two. The preschool (for children aged five and below) has two. Due to such a small number, we have combined the preschool with Year One,” she was quoted saying further.

School board chairman Jacky Lau Tiong King told The Borneo Post that the school was losing the fight against the migration of the villagers to towns and cities.

"With the dwindling village population, the few schools here are fighting for survival. Just imagine – there is another primary school just 3km away from us. Our school population has been dropping every year.”

He lamented that the abolishment of tolls on Lanang Bridge also did little in addressing the mass migration, or encouraging those who left, to move back.