Two hundred school girls in Malaysia were forced by their hostel
warden to squat in a murky pond after they failed to own up to a
sanitary pad found in the toilet.
The girls were in the pond for an hour in heavy rain and the warden
watched under an umbrella in Sarawak state on the island of Borneo,
newspapers reported on Sunday. A picture on the front page showed
the girls neck-deep in water.
"We do not want to point fingers at anyone now but we will take
action against those who are wrong," the Star newspaper quoted
education minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein as saying.
"This kind of punishment is inhumane. The water from the pond is
dirty as waste from the canteen flows straight into it," Jimmy Kiu,
chairman of the parent-teacher association was quoted as
saying.
A school official said the warden was angry and decided to punish
the girls after no one owned up the responsibility of leaving the
pad in the toilet.