INTERESTING: Fatimah (second left) stops by at one of the booths at the exhibition.
KUCHING: The state needs over 300 more teachers in secondary schools, thus there is a need to recruit more temporary teachers, said Minister of Welfare, Women and Family Development Datuk Fatimah Abdullah.
Concerned with the matter, at the State Education Exco meeting chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Mohd Yassin last week, the state requested the federal government to allow it to take in temporary teachers to fill up some of the vacancies, the Dalat assemblywoman disclosed when met at the launching ceremony of the state-level Malaysia Chemistry Carnival at Kolej Datu Patinggi Abang Haji Abdillah in Petra Jaya here yesterday.
According to her, the meeting was attended by state ministers in charge of education to share their views on educational matters.
She said while the Education Blueprint will be revealed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak today, the state government is concerned about certain peculiar issues in the state.
“We are facing a shortage of teachers for various subjects. There are vacancies as some teachers left the sector to further their studies, retire or go on maternity leave. And then last year, the state Education Department received circulars stating that schools were no longer allowed to employ temporary teachers,” she lamented.
“Schools are only allowed to take teachers who graduated in education training and who are yet to be posted. The problem is that there are not enough of these teachers to fill up the vacancies in Sarawak.
“We just can’t take anybody because we need people to fit the requirement and needs according to the teachers’ major and subjects to be taught,” she explained.
She also lamented that teachers were burdened with extra working hours and additional workload as apart from teaching they also had to do school-based assessments and other tasks.
Considering that the shortage would not be addressed until the next posting in July next year, she said the state had asked to be allowed to take temporary teachers like before.
She also said she had submitted a list prepared by State Education Department on schools needing upgrading, new buildings, new hostels and repair works according to priority.