KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — The Environment and Water Ministry is looking for Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) student who threw his books into a river recently.

This is after the video of the student was shared on the Info Roadblock JPJ/Polis Facebook page and garnered a lot of attention from social media users who criticised the teenager’s action.

However, the ministry said on their Facebook page instead of punishing him, they wanted the teenager to join one of their programmes.

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“If there’s anyone who knew this teenager, Kasa (the Malay abbreviation for the ministry) would like to invite him to be a member of our Friends of River Malaysia so that we can work together in cleaning the rivers around the country in conjunction with the International Water Day this March 22.”

“Maybe through the support and education by the community, not only this kid but a lot more people would be more aware of our rivers cleanliness state.”

The ministry’s post garnered over 8,000 likes and has been shared over 9,000 times on Facebook.

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Facebook users also applauded the ministry’s efforts for using an educational approach to resolve the matter.

“Yes, instead of penalising, let them see how dirty our rivers are and know how important our rivers are to us. Educate the younger generations if their parents failed to educate them,” user Zen Sern commented.

“Good job, this is how we should educate kids like these, instead of getting angry at them, it’s better if we ask them to clean up the rivers, go find back your books in the river ‘dik’,” commented user Mckenzei Lester.

Last Friday, the video of a student throwing away some books into the river as a form of celebration for completing his SPM exams circulated on Facebook.

The 12-second video which caused an uproar amongst social media users garnered over 3,000 likes and has been shared over 2,000 times on Facebook.