KUCHING: Sarawak Teachers’ Union (STU) said it is high time that air quality monitoring stations be set up in all districts especially where there is a higher concentration of schools.
Its secretary general Chung Fui San, in a press statement yesterday, said the setting up of such infrastructure would provide accurate data for schools to make prompt decisions.
“STU is aware that some schools cannot be closed even though the haze appears to have seemingly worsened because the areas where the schools are in do not have air quality monitoring stations and would only rely on the API reading from other areas.
“A case in point is schools in Serian which were not closed in the past few days even though the API readings in Kuching were over 200. This is because Serian do not have any monitoring station and depends entirely on the API readings for Samarahan which were below 200.
“This causes problems for the schools because the API readings of Samarahan do not reflect the real air quality in Serian but the schools were not ordered to close eventhough their students were physically affected by the haze.”
