KENINGAU: Sabah Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (PGRM) Youth has expressed its utter disappointment at the performance of the State Education Department in addressing the much-needed repair work on schools in the state.
The movement head, Cleyrance Lee Chen Peng, said, the urgent repair work included buildings that are close to becoming obsolete, facilities, and damage by fire and natural disasters throughout the state.
“As chairman of the state Parti Gerakan Youth movement, we express regret and utter disappointment with the Ministry of Education and the State Education Department for failing to expedite the necessary approvals for repairs and upgrading of schools in Sabah,” he said in a statement to the media here yesterday.
Lee said, schools that have been damaged by fire, natural disasters such as floods, landslides and strong winds, and school buildings that are in poor and dilapidated condition require urgent repairs and upgrading works immediately to ensure a safe and comfortable learning environment for the students concerned.
The movement views the department statement recently, where it tried to explain the shortcomings as only an attempt to find a scapegoat to cover its inefficiency
“The statement by the department that the lack of expertise in the tender process in many schools as the cause why many schools’ facilities cannot be repaired immediately is a ‘lame duck’ excuse and totally unacceptable more so now that we are in the era of information technology.
“We feel the department was more responsible for the delay in taking action on this matter, and also shows an apparent lack of leadership to make the necessary plans to strengthen the capacity and capability of the department and its employees even after the Ministry of Education had given more authority to the department to approve projects valued at below RM5 million.
“The department should have adopted the National Blue Ocean Strategy when addressing the problems it faces, such as using experts on adhoc basis from other departments or outsourcing the tender process to professional accredited firms until such time these vacancies are filled either by staff exchange or new intake,” he said.
In fact, according to Lee, in the era of information technology, inspection of work plans and tender processes can be done online by experts without having to be physically present at the location when advanced technology is fully utilized.
He said making use of specialist staff can be arranged and coordinated by the Public Works Department (PWD) and the State Development Office (Implementation Coordination Unit, Prime Minister’s Department) to address the constraints due to lack of specialist staff.
In reality, he said, the State Department of Education has been a source of disappointment to state political leaders who had fought with vigor to get the Ministry of Education to give authority to the Department to be responsible for undertaking repair work directly without having to go through the rigmarole of bureaucratic red tape in having to refer to the Ministry of Education every time for approval as practised in the past.
“As it stands, the power delegated by the Ministry of Education have not been of much help in addressing the much needed repairs and upgrading of school facilities in Sabah.
“What is even more saddening is that innocent students become victims of the situation due to a failure of the department to function efficiently to achieve performance aspired by the people and political leaders,” he said.
Lee urges the department take immediate steps to resolve its shortcomings as the allocations under Budget 2014 is already available and can be fully utilized for the benefit of schools in Sabah before the end of this year. Failure to address the problem, he said, would mean the under utilised budget allocations would have to be returned and would be reflective of the poor performance of the department.