Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising numbers of confirmed cases in Singapore, concerns among people grew as schools remain open.
The founding leader of People’s Voice (PV), Lim Tean, brought this particular issue to Facebook this morning (25 March), demanding for schools to shut down. He emphasised that PV had been calling for school closures since early February, and up until today, actions are yet to be taken by the Ministry of Education.
“Peoples Voice has been at the forefront demanding for closures of our schools because of the COVID-19 crisis. Our demand started in early February when we foresaw the dangers involved in keeping schools open,” wrote Mr Lim.
Mr Lim claimed that the Minister of Education, Ong Ye Kung, had been providing plenty of reasons to keep the schools open instead of prioritising the lives of our children. School children will be spending a lot of time in confined spaces like classrooms, making them prone to infection via close contact.
“Ong Ye Kung has refused to close schools, but instead has come out with all sorts of irrelevant and fallacious reasons to keep the schools open, and ignoring the grave dangers that our Young face from infections when they are in close contact with one another for hours in the confines of the classroom.”
Seeing how countries like Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and Australia had shut down their schools to protect their children, Mr Lim thought that it was illogical to keep Singaporean schools open. Due to the government’s decision to suspend tuition centres, many parents could not fathom how schools are still operating when tuition centres were shut down.
“Schools in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Britain amongst other countries have been closed. Yesterday’s suspension of tuition centres by the government is an admission by them of the dangers of infection amongst schoolchildren. Many parents have asked why if the tuition centres are closed, are the schools still open? It is illogical!”
Promising to never gamble with Singaporeans’ health and safety, PV stated that they are supporting the online petitions available online, intending to gather enough voices to shut the schools.
“Peoples Voice is happy to support the many online petitions started by concerned Singaporeans and parents to have schools closed. One such petition was started by Ceng Kian. We urge all concerned Singaporeans to join us and sign onto the petitions so that our collective Voices are heard loud and clear! Please share this petition widely,” stated Mr Lim.
