KUCHING: Sarawak Teachers’ Union (STU) has welcomed the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) recent announcement to place at least 1,500 teachers in Sarawak to overcome the teacher shortage problem.
Its president Kullin Djayang said with this latest development, it will to some extent reduce the burden of teachers and students in continuing the teaching and learning sessions at school.
“Although only approximately half of the 3,000 teachers vacancies will be filled, STU is grateful for the concern shown by MoE on the matter,” he told New Sarawak Tribune.
He added STU will make sure that MoE continues its focus on filling the teaching vacancies in Sarawak completely by the end of this year.
“In the meantime, we also emphasised that priority should always be given to Sarawakians to work in their home state that is in line with the 90:10 ratio policy,” he said.
On other matters concerning education in the state, Kullin called upon both the state and federal governments to make a serious effort to resolve the issue of dilapidated schools in Sarawak.
“The Education Minister herself has stated that the learning facilities in Sarawak are still far behind other states in the country.
“And this is not only about the poor learning facilities but lack of communication facilities whereby there is still poor Internet access in some of the rural schools,” he said.
In the 21st century, Kullin stressed digitisation of education is very important, hence STU insisted that these improvements should be taken seriously and implemented immediately so that the education gap between rural and urban areas can be reduced.
On another note, he said under the present leadership, STU believes MoE will be more sensitive and ready to take drastic action to deal with education issues in the state.
“We also hope the MoE can recruit some academic experts from Sarawak to be together in the MoE’s advisory body in the future,” he said.
