KOTA KINABALU: The Federal Government has only engaged fewer than 40 Sabahans to become teachers this year despite 292 people qualifying to be hired as educators from the state under the Contract of Service (COS) scheme, says Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal (pic).
The former Sabah chief minister took the government to task about the matter, saying Putrajaya must address this problem by hiring these Sabahans as contract teachers.
Shafie, who is also Parti Warisan president, added the process would be less costly compared with transferring teachers from Peninsular Malaysia to Sabah.
Highlighting Sabah’s continued state of neglect by the government ranging from infrastructure to education and healthcare, he said the shortage of teachers in the state had reached a critical stage.
“There is no reason why these teachers should not be hired because it solves the hassle of having to transfer teachers from other states to Sabah, which basically incurs higher cost,” said the Semporna MP in a statement on Friday (July 8).
“Furthermore, the government has already promised to support the ratio of local teachers to non-Sabahan teachers at 90:10 in this state.
“It is a great shame that even in matters concerning education, the government has failed to give serious attention to Sabah. They simply do not listen to the problems that the people constantly have to face.
“For the sake of the future of children in Sabah, settle this problem once and for all. We are building a nation. Why should Sabahans not get the same treatment as Malaysians in the peninsula? Are we not Malaysians, too?” he added.
On May 11, Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin was reported to have said that a total of 2,400 vacancies in the one-off recruitment of 18,702 teachers would be filled by COS teachers whose contracts are due to end this month.
Radzi had, however, said in June that no special quota has been allocated for COS teachers in the one-off intake for Grade DG41 education service officers.
He said the priority in the selection of teachers would be on graduates with education majors.
Due to the unavailability of the full data over the number of graduates possessing education majors in the market, he said, the ministry has instead made a projection and submitted a list of about 4,000 candidates with no education majors to the Public Service Department.
“It was actually a shortlist, not a quota, of COS candidates,” he said.
Shafie meanwhile said he will raise the issue in the coming parliamentary session this month.
The Semporna MP said there were also hundreds of dilapidated schools in Sabah which deprived schoolchildren from getting equal access to education as their counterparts in the other states in Malaysia.
“This state of neglect has even extended to Sabahan teachers who deserve to be given employment opportunities,” he said.
During a zoom meeting with Shafie on Thursday night (July 7), the teachers expressed their disappointment after they learned on May 28 this year that nearly all of them failed to be hired under the COS scheme.
