To school with heavy burden

New school term begins today. Many parents has been visiting the shopping complexes and shops for the past few weeks to purchase school items for their school going kids. With the slowing down of the economy, every cent counts and parents are always on the look out for the best bargains. It will totalled up to few hundred bucks to a thousand if a family have four school going kids especially if they are buying those branded items.

For those kids who don't mind having non branded school shoes, a pair of canvas and rubber white shoes can be bought as low as RM3.99. Buying a pair of a local made popular brand because other kids having it too, it will cost at least RM 20.00 to RM40.00 a pair. Each kids will need at least two pairs each.

When it's time to pack the bags for school, it is normal if the school bags with the books (textbook, work book, exercise books, dictionary etc), color pencils, pencil case and a filled water tumbler slotted into the bag's side pocket - with the total weight of between 7 - 10 kgs. No wonder those trolley bags is an hot item not to be left out in any school items shopping spree. Those sturdy and popular ones comes with a price tag of between RM69 - RM 109 but we will be happy if it lasts one year of schooling!

Those kids with classrooms at the ground floor will be lucky but for those at the 2nd or 3rd floors, just imagine these poor kids have to carry the 10 kilos school bags up on the stairs. If the kids weighted just about 20 kgs, they will be carrying half of their weight on 2 - 6 flights of stairs!

My elder son's bag with everything loaded weighted about 9 kilos and his classroom is situated at the 2nd floor. To spread out the weight, all his exercise books were placed in a separate hand carry document bag. My son told me his teacher advised his class not to carry school bags with contents weighted more than 15% of their own weight. Most of the kids would have failed in this school bag test. Based on the advise, a 30kgs kid cannot carry more than 4.5kgs loaded bag but most loaded school bags are more than 4.5kgs!

Can the Education Ministry comes out with a practical solution to lessen the burden of the kids. - Loka