'Federal Government only approved RM95mil to repair Sarawak schools'

KUCHING: Sarawak had applied for RM422mil this year to repair schools but the Federal Government only approved an allocation of RM95mil.

This was revealed Monday by state Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah who keeps a watching brief on education for Sarawak since the matter falls under the Federal Government's purview.

She said RM422mil was the repair cost estimate for 981 schools that needed urgent attention. All except 39 of the schools were in rural areas.

As for allocations under Budget 2016 for Sarawak, Fatimah said it would still "not be enough, definitely".

"We understand there are constraints faced by (the) Federal (Government) but our problems need to be given more consideration," Fatimah told The Star.

According to her, many of the state's rural schools were built before independence by local communities. "Some schools still in use were built by kampung people. They did it by gotong-royong. Out of their spirit, they built schools, but now these schools are in very poor condition."

In the third and final series of the 2014 Auditor-General’s Report that was released on Monday, only schools in Sarawak were singled out for poor conditions.

The A-G found more than a quarter of all schools in Sarawak with "serious defects". 

The report said 388 schools were either deemed to have inferior quality of buildings or bad maintenance, of which 124 schools "had serious defects that require immediate and urgent repair".

On the A-G's findings, Fatimah said she was "not surprised".

"I concur with the report. That is what we have been saying for a long time. In my constituency, there is a school the Public Works Department has declared not safe to use," she added.