KUCHING: Teachers who have not been inoculated yet are urged to go for vaccination for their own sake and to instill confidence in parents to send their children back to school.
The Sarawak Teachers’ Union (STU) president Adam Prakash Abdullah stated that it is important to assure the public that it would be safe for teachers and their students to share the same space.
“Teachers are role models. We should all be eager to get vaccinated as it is provided for free and it would be a motivating factor for students to get themselves vaccinated later.
“We would like to see schools operate as usual and we hope the learning environment would be safe come October,” he said when contacted on Tuesday (Sept 7).
Regarding Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin’s recent announcement that teachers who have not been vaccinated will not be allowed to teach students face-to-face, Adam agreed because such teachers would and could somehow disrupt the normal school operations.
He pointed out that other teachers would have to bear extra workload by taking classes belonging to unvaccinated teachers.
“STU hopes that there would be no complaints from unvaccinated teachers pertaining to their duties as they themselves have made a decision that is not in line with the mainstream or national vaccination programme,” he said.
Adam also said that schools are always ready to reopen, and he believes that all have made the necessary arrangements for reopening based on the standard operating procedures (SOPs) set by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Education (MOE).
He hoped that parents would be supportive by send their children to school to continue face-to-face learning from their teachers.
“The children have been away from school for too long. It would take some time to restore the discipline of learning in physical classrooms.
“We hope parents would support the teachers and schools to make sure that the children can continue their school life as soon as possible,” he said.
