Trust Sabahans to solve education problems – Masidi

KOTA KINABALU: State education exco Datuk Masidi Manjun has urged the federal government to look at Sabah’s education problems in a different perspective.Speaking at the launch of the State Education Department excellent service awards presentation ceremony at the Federal Administrative Building yesterday, Masidi said the main problem why many problems had never been solved in the State was that the federal government always looked at education in Sabah from the peninsula perspective.

“Sabah is a big land, where we need more allocations to address our educational needs, not only in the rural areas but also in the city.

“We want the federal government to trust Sabahans to overcome our own education problems because we know our situation here,” said Masidi.

He added that the State Education Department would be able to do what is best for education in Sabah, as long as the federal government is giving the promised allocations without any delay.

One of the existing problems that remains unsolved since the Ninth Malaysia Plan was the project to provide computer labs for schools in Sabah, said Masidi who presented excellent service awards to 192 Education Department staff, principals and headmasters.

“Out of a total of 300 computer laboratories, we only managed to get 250 for schools in the state.

“But only three of 250 computer labs have been completed thus far. The poor performance of these contractors has deprived our students of learning basic computer applications,” said Masidi who is also the Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister.

He said the contractors for the projects were appointed by the Education Ministry at the federal level and these contractors would not know the present situation in Sabah, unlike the local contractors.

“These contractors get into a situation where they do not know our situation, especially when building computer labs in the rural areas that do not have any electricity supply.

“It is not easy to implement projects awarded to the education sector in the state if they do not understand our situation.

“So I am hoping that the Education Ministry should give tender awards to the local contractors, and also trust the State Education Department to carry out the task to develop our education system,” he added.

Earlier in his speech, State education director Dr Haji Muhiddin Yusin said education infrastructural problems had put Sabah at the bottom of the list, especially in the interior.

He said there was a miss-match in teachers posting due to the shortage of English and Maths teachers.

“We receive more teachers who are teaching in other subjects, while we still need more than 300 English teachers and about 200 Maths teachers,” he said.