KUCHING: A call has been made on officials from the Education Ministry to earnestly follow through the plan outlined by Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin on increasing the number of trainees from the state at teachers training institutes (IPGs) .
Stressing this, Assistant Minister of Youth Development Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah believed that while the proposal by Muhyiddin – who is also Education Minister – was good news, the onus would be on the officials responsible for the selection.
“The assurance by Muhyiddin to increase the intake (of trainees) from Sarawak at IPGs and have them serve the state is good news for Sarawak.
“However, we hope that such assurance would be followed through by officials in his ministry as they (officials) are the ones who will be doing the selection,” he said when contacted for his comments on the proposal by the deputy premier.
Muhyiddin told a press conference here on Thursday that to improve the future intake percentage of teachers from the state, his ministry had agreed to re-examine the existing status.
“If the current number of Sarawakian teachers posted to the state is only 10 to 15 per cent of the total number of educators, the ministry would increase this percentage in stages,” he was quoted as saying.
Abdul Karim, also Assistant Minister of Housing, asserted that the ministry must ensure that there would be a sizeable number of Sarawakians graduating from IPGs to teach in schools across the state.
“We are not against West Malaysian or Sabahan teachers coming to serve in the state. If there are good, eligible teachers around, we might as well take them in.”
“Still, taking local teachers would be much easier because they can adapt themselves with the locals and be nearer to ‘home’,” the Asajaya assemblyman added, highlighting savings on government spending as another benefit to such move.
“Actually, it (taking local teachers) will save the government financially as they (government) need not have to cough out extra regional or hardship allowances like those currently being paid to teachers from Peninsular Malaysia.”
Meanwhile, there has been much debate over the past week about the so-called lack of qualified Sarawakians being trained as teachers at four IPGs in the state.
The issue arose following a statement by Second Minister of Education Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh saying that teachers from the peninsula had to be posted to Sarawak due to lack of qualified local graduates suited for vacancies.
Land Development Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar James Masing was among those upset by the remark, believing that the matter was ‘more political than technical’.
Idris, among other things, was also quoted as saying that this year alone, Sarawak required 2,432 teachers, but the number of qualified Sarawakians for the job stood at only 601.