THE Indian community was caught by surprise over reports that a committee on Hindu temples under the Human Resources Ministry would be disbanded, Malaysia Nanban reported.
The committee was instituted two years ago when MIC deputy president Datuk Seri M. Saravanan was the minister.
Headed by Datuk Dr Paramasivam Muthusamy, it had been working for the past two years to compile information on all Hindu temples in the country.
The committee had already visited and collected data on 562 temples around the country which had been collated on a portal.
It had also conducted courses in Johor that had been attended by 324 temple representatives, while a similar session in Perak saw more than 400 participants.
The committee was eventually supposed to expand its role into training temple related functionaries, such as priests, and conducting spiritual classes.
Paramasivam had asked the current Human Resources Minister and Batu Gajah MP V. Sivakumar to allow the committee to continue with its mandate.
This request was reportedly denied and the 10-person committee’s activities suspended.
● The above article is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this ‘ >’sign, it denotes a separate news item.