Country seeing more young children wearing glasses

KOSMO AHAD reported that close to a million children below 12 years wear glasses in Malaysia because they spend too much time on electronic gadgets such as tablets, handphones and video games.

According to Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s faculty of science contact lens specialist Prof Dr Haliza Abdul Mutalib, there has been a rise in the number of young children wearing glasses and her youngest patient is a three-year-old.

“On average, three out of 10 patients have vision problems caused by long usage of electronic gadgets,” Prof Dr Haliza said when commenting on the rising number of young children using glasses over the past three years.

Optimax Eye Specialist Centre’s consultant Dr Nor Zurainura Zainal said children who use electronic gadgets at a close distance frequently had dry and tired eyes.

She recommended that such individuals should give their eyes a rest every 20 minutes.

“They could look away at a far off object or scenery for at least 20 seconds,” she suggested.

> It was reported in Metro Ahad that a 49-year-old headmaster of a primary school in Jempol, Negri Sembilan, is being investigated for allegedly molesting a 26-year-old man at the school last Tuesday.

Jempol OCPD Supt Hamzah Alias said the incident occurred at about 1pm. The school’s IT worker was resting in his room when the headmaster entered.

“The victim claimed the headmaster unzipped his pants and started molesting him,” he said, adding that the IT worker’s plea for the headmaster to stop was ignored.

Supt Hamzah said the headmaster later warned the worker not to tell anyone about the incident.

The traumatised victim lodged a report with the Jempol district police station at about 11.30am on Thursday, Supt Hamzah said.

The headmaster was picked up on the same day. He is being investigated under Section 254 of the Penal Code for molesting the IT worker. He was released on police bail later that day.

State Education director Datuk Kalsom Khalid said the department was waiting for a report on the incident. “We would decide on the next course of action pending the outcome of police investigations.”

?  Found in Translation 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.