The ashram’s committee member, Sri Skanda Rajah said while religion was important, creating educated, religious individuals was higher up on the priority list. To achieve this, he added, the three schools under their care needed to be converted into Trust Schools. The ashram’s dependence on donations, he said, fell short of the required RM4-5 million needed to execute and maintain this plan.
“When you look at the Malay and Chinese schools, you can see that the two are well-funded, but not Tamil schools. Part of our policy is to change our current education facilities into Trust Schools, which will see a transformation of the whole student-teacher dynamic.
“We have managed to do this with our primary school and we can really see the difference. Now we want to do the same for the other three schools,” said Sri Skanda at a press conference in the ashram yesterday evening.
He explained that donations from the public often amounted to between RM500,000 to RM1 million and even this was not consistent. Last year, when the ashram was embroiled in a controversy over this development project, it received “zero donations”.
“If the government can promise to provide us with RM4-5 million ringgit a year, we guarantee the situation will be different. But that is not the case at present.”
Currently, the government allocates RM6 million a year for the ashram but according to Sri Skanda, this fund comes with strict conditions that, ultimately, allows it to be used only for building purposes. Funds for other aspects of the schools’ education programmes had to come from the ashram itself.
When met after the press conference, Brickfields Asia College Founder and Save Vivekananda Ashram Committee Member, Raja Singham, said he was willing to sit down with the board members and discuss ways which would help the ashram generate the said amount of money.
“We want to teach them how to fish. I am willing to help them achieve their goal as long as the ashram can be saved.”