KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 — Anger over the renaming of the St Thomas schools in Kuantan was misplaced, said Datuk P. Kamalanathan when explaining that a decision from 2012 meant the institutions would no longer continue.
Responding to public displeasure over the purported plan to rename the St Thomas primary and secondary schools to Sekolah Mahkota Abdullah once they are relocated, he clarified that the missionary schools were destined to cease when the Catholic Church decided to take back the land.
According to The Star, the deputy education minister said the secondary school was now the site of the Regent International School while the students have been sharing facilities with SK Teruntum and SMK Sultan Abu Bakar after they vacated their old premises.
“The land doesn’t belong to the ministry. The church owns the land. The day the land where the St Thomas school stood was given back to the church, it put an end to the school,” he was quoted as saying.
The current arrangement for the former pupils of St Thomas was temporary, which prompted the federal government to build the new school to accommodate them, Kamalanathan explained.
The deputy minister said if the church was keen on retaining the St Thomas name, it was free to do so on its own, but stressed that Sekolah Mahkota Abdullah was an entirely new school and not a relocation of the ones named St Thomas.
“Therefore, the schools built by the government would carry new names. The name St Thomas ceased the day the church took back the land,” he reiterated.
Controversy erupted over the purported “renaming” of the historic missionary schools after a Pahang official said the Education Department decided to do so after allegedly finding the original name “unsuitable”.
The news upset both parents of existing students and alumni of the schools, who responded by urging the government to consider the history and significance of the schools, in their bid to convince authorities to revisit the decision.
In 2008, the church had wanted to take back the land that the schools had occupied for free, reportedly to expand the facilities of the church.
However, it changed its mind and asked instead that the federal government pay a token sum as rent for the land, which the government responded to by initiating procedures to acquire the land.
In 2012, the church sued the federal government over the land acquisition bid, which prompted the government to cease its attempt.
Putrajaya then began moving the pupils out soon after, despite the church saying they could remain until the end of 2015.
