Federal govt must resolve education issues in S’wak — NGO

MIRI: Gagasan Anak Dayak Sarawak Association (GADS) wants the federal government to fully improve facilities and education quality in schools across the state in order to produce quality human resource from Sarawak.

“The failure to produce quality teachers is the result of the Federal Government’s failure to carry out its duty and unfair distribution of funding in education, compared to Peninsular Malaysia, since the formation of Malaysia,” GADS said in a press statement yesterday.

Its chairman Vicky Gulin Shandom said the effort required the necessary funding from the Federal Government because education is under their responsibility.

Vicky added that GADS was of the opinion that quality teachers were crucial in the effort to produce a generation of quality and knowledgeable students.

“Only organisations with quality individuals can produce a generation of people who are smart, intelligent and far sighted who can contribute to the nation’s development,” he said.

He noted that GADS had urged the government to cancel its plan through the Ministry of Education Malaysia, to close down Teachers Institutes (IPG) in Miri and Bintangor if the target of 90:10 local teachers ratio was to be achieved.

“Apart from that, the IPG should accept only Sarawakians as teacher trainees, until the 90:10 ratio is achieved,”he said.

He was commenting on the Minister of Education, Science and Technological Research Dato Sri Michael Manyin’s statement that Sarawak would not be able to achieve the 90:10 ratio of local teachers by 2018.