PENAMPANG: The United Pasokmomogun KadazanDusun Murut Organization’s (Upko) 13th triennial delegates congress yesterday passed six resolutions for the party’s leadership to follow up on.
Among the resolutions are the need for Sabah and Sarawak to be given autonomy in managing and addressing their respective education issues as well as the setting up of a KDM higher learning institute.
Upko Women urged the Federal Government to give full power to the education directors in the two states, to allow them to decide on the education issues in their respective states, including the recruitment of new teachers.
The movement also wants a special panel from Sabah and Sarawak to be appointed in the Teacher Education Division, and priority to be given to local natives in the recruitment of trainee teachers in overcoming the problem of getting teachers to serve in rural areas in east Malaysia.
They said that while the 40:30:30 quota for the recruitment of teachers from Semenanjung, Sabah and Sarawak was acceptable, there were no guarantees that this quota was being observed, as the recruitment panel was made up only of education officers from Semenanjung, with no representation from Sabah and Sarawak.
The movement also urged the BN Government to expedite effort to get untrained attachment teachers (GSTT), whose services have been terminated, reinstated toward helping address the shortage of teachers in Sabah.
Another resolution, which was tabled by Upko’s Citizenship Bureau chairman Datuk Donald Mojuntin, called on the government to stop renewing the IMM13 documents given to Indonesians and Filipino refugees as there is no longer a need to do so.
The relationship between Malaysia and Indonesia is back to normal, so the governments of both countries should initiate talks instead to discuss deportation process for their citizens,” he said, adding that in the case of the Filipinos, IMM13 renewal will be done only for those who are willing to be employed as factory and plantation workers in peninsular Malaysia.
Upko’s Komulakan movement tabled a resolution on the power sharing concept within Barsian Nasional while its Youth movement called on the BN leadership to increase the number of seats for Upko in the 13th general election.
Upko vice president Datuk Senator Maijo Mahap, who chairs the party’s Legal and Land Issues Bureau, tabled a resolution on land and native customary rights (NCR), calling for a more transparent procedure in processing and approving land applications.
The party urged the government to cancel the approvals for lands that have been given to companies in order to give the natives a fair opportunity to practise their right to own land, gazette native villages located in forest reserves as settlement areas, and ensure the ratio of native title lands remain more than other type of lands.