STU urges ministry to station medical personnel to monitor isolation rooms in schools
SIBU: A call has been made for the Ministry of Education (MoE) to request the Ministry of Health (MoH) to assign medical staff to take charge of isolation rooms in schools to ensure effective monitoring and handling of infected students, whenever there are Covid-19 cases being reported.
Sarawak Teachers Union (STU) president Adam Prakash Abdullah pointed out that this was among the four proposals and resolutions put forth during its second executive committee council meeting at Kingwood Hotel here yesterday.
“This is because we believe that the medical staff members are those who have been trained, and that they are the best people to take care of Covid-19 infected students,” he said at a press conference held after the meeting.
In addition, Adam said STU also urged MoE to standardise the Deepavali holiday for all schools in Malaysia, so as to instil the spirit of ‘Keluarga Malaysia’ (Malaysian Family).
He recalled that the issue pertaining to Deepavali holiday had been discussed at length by the teachers as well as other government officers in Sarawak.
The third proposal, said Adam, was for MoE to lessen the external pressures upon the teachers such as data-collecting or preparing assessments under tight deadlines.
He cited ‘Pentaksiran Setara Standard 2021’ as an example of such pressure and thus, he said the union called for full authority to be given to the school in preparing data, and not doing ‘the redundant work’ given by the District Education Office (PPD).
“We hope that teachers are not called to do duplicate work from time to time,” he added.
Touching on STU’s fourth proposal, Adam said it called for MoE to support ‘work-andlife well-being of the teachers and the employees of MoE, by respecting their quality time after office hours’.
“The teachers are wellinformed, and if given the right tools, empowerment and support, they would not only perform, but they would thrive as well.
“In stating this, the teachers also need free time to be with their families and this includes the time for holidays; they should not be sent sending work instructions and messages during such free time,” he said.
Adam said during the meeting, the STU exco members had discussed and decided to raise to the MoE several issues, in the hope that they could be solved amicably by the ministry.