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Kota Kinabalu: A Principal of a Kota Belud secondary school where an English teacher refused to teach the subject to his Form Four students for seven months some five years ago, allegedly called the students “stupid” when they (students) complained about the matter.Calvina Angayung, 21, said in her witness statement that the principal had allegedly uttered the word “stupid” two times as well as yelled at them when they complained about their English teacher not turning up in class.

Calvina, who is the third plaintiff together with two other former students of the school, namely, first plaintiff Rusiah Sabdarin and second plaintiff Nur Natasha Allisya Hamali, had sued teacher Mohd Jainal Jamrin (Mr JJ) (first defendant), Hj Suid Hj Hanapi (in his capacity as principal of the SMK Taun Gusi)(second defendant), Director General of Education Malaysia (third defendant), Minister of Education Malaysia (fourth defendant) and Government of Malaysia (fifth defendant).

Among others, they claimed that the teacher failed to turn up in class to teach the subject for seven months in 2017 while the other defendants took no reasonable action despite being notified of the matter.

Calvina informed the court that on Nov 1, 2017, she and her friends Rusiah, Fadzley and Aishah had met the principal and used audio watch to record the conversation with the principal.

“When we met the principal we have asked him if he knew about the problem of a teacher who did not enter our class in which he replied he did not know about it and said he only knew about the issue when one ‘Cikgu Awang’ made a report to him.

“The principal told us that we were not responsible for not reporting this problem sooner. He also informed us that MR JJ will not be subjected to any action because it was already end of the year,” said Calvina, the fifth witness in the hearing.

According to Calvina, no action was taken by the school pertaining to the problem even after they met several teachers as well as the principal.

Calvina further testified that she and her friends had tried to call Mr JJ to teach them but he refused.

In one incident, Mr JJ was allegedly seen at the canteen with another teacher when he was supposed to teach them at the time.

To a question, Calvina said they filed the suit in 2020 as they wanted to wait till they turned 18 because they did not want their parents to represent them.

Calvina informed the court that the impact that she suffered after filing the case was that she lost her friends because they were the favourite students of Mr JJ and the teachers did not seem to acknowledge her when they saw her.

According to Calvina, she had to move to SMK Narinang to continue her Form Six because she did not want her results to be affected.

She added that after the suit was issued, she received a lot of insults from social media.

The three plaintiffs are now defended by counsel Sherzali Herza Asli while Senior Federal Counsel Mohd Hafizi Abd Halim who together with Federal Counsel Fazrul Fardiansyah Abdul Kadir for the defendants.

Trial continues.