KUCHING: Sarawak Teachers’ Union (STU) has called upon relevant authorities to ensure that high speed Internet coverage to be extended to all schools in the state.
STU newly-elected president Adam Prakash Abdullah said the call was one of the resolutions proposed after detailed deliberation among the STU members during its 25th Biennial Delegates’ Conference (BDC) held at Penview Hotel here on Dec 19 and 20.
“Even though a lot of parties are talking about improving the Internet coverage throughout the state since the Covid-19 pandemic hits in March this year, school teachers are still having problem of [conducting] online teaching with our students from home, especially those in the rural areas.
“The Internet coverage in certain places is very slow that the teachers had to spend extra hours to conduct online classes and some of them had to resort to using their own money for personal Internet data.
“So, STU urges the government to look into this matter urgently and to address it accordingly,” he told a press conference during the BDC event on Sunday (Dec 20).
Other resolutions which will be presented to relevant authorities include STU’s appeal on Internet Data Allowance to be given to teachers to assist them in conducting online classes and building of more schools to meet the growing population in the Bintulu division.
Currently, there are about 32 education institutions in Bintulu including 25 primary schools, six secondary schools and one vocational college with 31,826 students.
“We also want more Sarawakian teacher candidates to be chosen to be trained as “Guru Agama” (religious teacher) especially through the Program Diploma Pascasiswazah Pendidikan (PDPP) programme,” he added.
