Mashuthoo Abdul Rahiman – 2020 SG Silent Hero

Mr Mashuthoo, having been a teacher for more than four decades, has retired and is now a part time teacher. He has been, and still is, an active community leader in the Indian community serving in many Indian associations and charity organisations.

As he was a teacher, he always had an eye for catching students who were not doing well in their schools. He worked tirelessly in finding ways to improve the school grades of any students willing to learn and also for students in the low-income families. He started this long before familiar names such as SINDA, Mendaki or CDAC became known to Singaporeans. In the 1970s, he organised free tuition for students struggling with low grades, specifically from low income families. He started this for residents in Queenstown, Clementi and Bukit Merah areas with the help of members of the Singapore Kadayanallur Muslim League (SKML). This program was a huge success in terms of students’ participation and also produced good results with the students improving their grades.

He held the post of Secretary General from 1977 to 2015 and is serving as Deputy President since 2015 to now. He has also served in Singapore Tamil Teachers Union, Federation of Indian Muslims, Tamils Representative Council of Singapore just to name a few.

This year, he did something more for education but for seniors. There were quite a high number of adults in the Tamil community who didn’t get a chance to learn the Tamil language in their school days. These adults are in the 50s now. There are many of them in social welfare organisations serving Singaporeans but their lack of knowledge of Tamil language had been an obstacle in their efforts to reach out fully to the Tamil speaking community. These adults have expressed a desire to learn the Tamil language but there weren’t any opportunities available to them. Mashuthoo reached out to several institutions for assistance, roped in a highly qualified retired Tamil teacher and organised Tamil language classes, tailored to the needs of these individuals and at no cost to them. He raised the funds needed to run this program. He has such a good heart in helping others.