Kemas strives to achieve total zero-illiteracy in rural areas, says director-general
SARIKEI: The government’s efforts in battling illiteracy in the state are deemed successful, in that those in the target group can now master the three basic Ms — ‘ membaca’ (reading), ‘menulis’ (writing) and ‘mengira’ (arithmetic).
Community Development Department ( Kemas) directorgeneral Datuk Amiruddin Ariffin said many approaches had been implemented to help the target group master the three Ms since the formation of the department’s 56 years ago.
“The department is one of the government agencies tasked with helping this target group. We have seen that 98 per cent of those in the rural areas of Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak who were illiterate before, have now mastered the three Ms.
“This is a great achievement for Kemas, aside from providing early childhood education to children via our Kemas kindergartens and pre- schools which were set up in the 70s,” he said at the state-level ‘ Kemas Educators Day 2017’ at Dewan Sental here recently.
Amiruddin said Kemas aims to have all the illiterate folk in the country’s rural areas to fully master the three Ms.
According to him, with professional teachers at Kemas pre- schools and also the literacy education classes for the adults, the department should be able to achieve this target.
“We will give focus on this achievement first, in that all programme participants would get intensive training from the early stage.”
Acting Kemas Sarawak director Dayang Monalizawati Abang Ismail was also present at the event.