MUAR: Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said yesterday more discussions need to be held between the Education and Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism ministries on setting up cooperatives in primary schools.
Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, said that although it could not be denied the initiative was good for instilling the entreprenurship spirit at an early age, the matter needed to be studied in detail to evaluate the impact and implications on children at the primary school level who are at a very tender age.
“We also do not want in the end management of the cooperatives to be shouldered by the teachers looking after the cooperatives,” he said when opening the national-level colloquium for chairmen of school cooperatives here.
Muhyiddin said he shared the same opinion with Domestic Trade, Coopertaves and Consumerism Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob that all secondary schools in the country should have cooperatives.
He added that he was aware most had (cooperatives) and urged the few which did not, to speed up setting them up.
To make easier for them, he said, the Education Ministry issued a circular on August 24 last year instructing schools’ management to waive rental for the premises of school cooperatives. — Bernama