S’wak govt urged to view seriously the upgrading of dilapidated schools

Zulhaidah Suboh

MIRI (Aug 5): Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) Sibuti has urged the Sarawak government to seriously view the issue of dilapidated schools throughout the state.

Its chief Zulhaidah Suboh, in a press statement yesterday, asked about the allocations approved for upgrading of such schools because parents and students had been given ‘false hope’ all these while.

“If the federal and the state governments of Sarawak and Sabah take the issue of students’ safety as well as education seriously, there will be a lesser number of dilapidated schools and these problems would not continue until now,” she said.

She raised a question on allocations approved for the upgrading of schools here when commenting on an article published by an online news portal on July 21, which said that the Ministry of Education had identified 351 dilapidated schools in Sarawak, with 107 of them being declared unsafe by the Public Works Department (JKR).

The article quoted Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin as saying that the remaining 244 schools were also in a bad state and this was confirmed by the District Education Department.

“In Budget 2018, the Pakatan Harapan government was concerned about the state of schools in Sarawak and allocated RM1 billion to upgrade them, even though the state government said it was going to use funds from Sarawak Development Bank first for the purpose,” said Zulhaidah in the statement.

She added that the government had approved RM1.388 billion under the 11th Malaysia Plan (2016-2020) to upgrade 291 dilapidated schools in Sarawak.

“In Sabah, 282 school upgrading and rebuilding projects were approved between 2016 and 2022 with a cost of RM1.924 billion.

“The question now is, where have all these allocations gone to?

“Approving development and prebuilding projects without serious implementation action is like giving false hope to educators and parents,” she said.

Zulhaidah thus hoped the problems of dilapidated schools could be resolved immediately and efforts must be made to upgrade all dilapidated schools in the state, without giving the people false hope.

from Borneo Post Online https://bit.ly/3vIjRJT
via IFTTT