SARAWAK government wants Pakatan Harapan (PH) members in the august House to press for the disbursement of the RM1 billion pledged under Budget 2018 for repairing and upgrading dilapidated schools in Sarawak.
Assistant Minister of Education and Technological Research Dr Annuar Rapaee said Sarawak is in dire need of the RM1 billion fund to repair and upgrade such schools across Sarawak.
“RM1 billion is not enough to repair and upgrade all dilapidated schools in Sarawak,” he said when responding to a supplementary question posed by Aidel Lariwoo (PBB-Sadong Jaya) at the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) yesterday.
Dr Annuar said the new PH federal government should be giving more than RM1 billion to improve school facilities in Sarawak.
He, however, said this might only be a dream since the PH federal government had not even fulfilled its 100-day promises contained in its election manifesto.
Earlier, Dr Annuar said that 52 out of the 66 dilapidated schools being upgraded and had been awarded to the Ministry of Education were behind schedule.
He said only seven out of the 66 projects were ahead of schedule while the rest (7), were on schedule.
The previous federal BN government granted a total of 116 dilapidated-school projects to Sarawak before the 14th general election.
He also informed the august House that the 50 dilapidated-school projects that were awarded to the state Public Works Department (JKR) had been implemented in a satisfactory manner.
Dr Annuar added that 38 of the 50 projects were on schedule while six were ahead of schedule and six behind schedule.
The total cost of implementing the 116 dilapidated-school projects is RM419 million.
To address the delay of the 55 DS projects under the jurisdiction of MoE, Dr Annuar said the Sarawak government hoped that the ministry would relinquish the responsibility to the Sarawak education ministry.
This was to make sure that the ministry, led by Dato Sri Michael Manyin, would be able to monitor and supervise those projects so that they would be implemented according to schedule.