KUCHING: Sarawak is short of about 500 Islamic religious teachers for primary schools and about 200 Islamic religious teachers for secondary schools.
There are ongoing efforts to make sure Sarawak will have enough local Islamic religious teachers for the schools but they will take time.
Welfare, Community Well Being, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah said this when commenting on a suggestion by Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik that religious teachers from Kelantan and Terengganu be allowed to stay in the state to teach Islamic education.
Before making the suggestion in the Dewan Rakyat, Maszlee had pointed out the shortage of Islamic religious teachers in Sabah and Sarawak.
Fatimah was approached by the press after officiating at the 1st International Conference on Innovative Sciences and Technologies for Research and Education (InnoStre) 2018 at Riverside Majestic Hotel here yesterday.
She pointed out that one way for Sarawak to overcome the shortage of Islamic religious teachers was to have more students going for Islamic education before being trained in the education field in universities.
Fatimah stressed that Islamic religious teachers in Sarawak should only focus on teaching Muslim students.
“I am not sure what the minister meant when he talked about propagation of Islam by Muslim religious teachers. We, including those at the ministerial level, must be very careful to avoid misunderstandings. We do not want uneasy feelings among our multiracial and multi-religious community. We must maintain racial harmony in the state,” she added.
