School to get new hostel for remote area students

TUARAN: Once a month, a teenager who aspires to become a teacher guides her brother on a four-hour trek in the forest back to a packed hostel where 16 children share a room.
Suzanna Sibun is among 200 students from remote villages in Kiulu who by next year will have more living space following a pledge to build an additional dormitory at SMK Tun Fuad Stephens.

"My brother Victor is in Form One and I walk with him for four hours from our house in Kampung Poring until we get to a road. Then we get on a van that takes us on a gravel road for an hour to reach our school.

"We have a hostel, but there are too many of us in one room. I am glad there will be a new block for us by next year. This is the only way we can study," Suzanna, who will enter Form Five next year, said.

Suzanna and her hostel-mates yesterday witnessed the ground-breaking ceremony for a hostel which is expected to be opened in time for next year's school session.
The RM200,000 hostel will be named "Asrama Donni" in remembrance of 11-year-old Donni John Duin who committed suicide two years ago to ease the burden of his poverty-stricken family.

Donni was a pupil of SK Kinarut in Papar.

The hostel is expected to accommodate 100 children.

On Friday, the alumni of Maktab Rendah Sains Mara (MRSM) Kulim, who call themselves "Killerbatch", handed RM56,576 to Sabah Credit Corporation general manager Datuk Vincent Pung for the agency to assist in the construction of the facility.

Raja Ali Raja Othman, who represented Killerbatch at the event, held back tears as he told students the reason a hostel was being built for them.

"I was upset that an 11-year-old had taken his life and at that time, my son was the same age. It would have been so sad if my son had faced the same predicament.

"I met Pung a few days later and our talk sidetracked from business to what happened to Donni. This is when I learned that it is normal for children to walk for hours to get to school.

"Killerbatch celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, so we decided to build a hostel in Sabah and name it after Donni," he said.