SUPP Youth: new government should rectify weakness in Sarawak education infrastructure

suppadmin | September 8, 2018

SUPP Youth Chairman, Michael Tiang said after pointing out the errors in history textbooks three years ago in a press conference, the same error in the Primary 5 textbook has yet to be corrected.

Tiang in a press conference yesterday with youth secretary, Milton Foo said the errors and omissions discovered are mostly regarding the role of Sarawak in Malaysia’s independence process and the Minister of Education took no actions to review the textbook.

“ Today we also discovered some serious mistake in historical facts contained in Primary 6 textbook!

I would like to talk about Primary 5 history textbook first. The issues arise in the chapter about “The birth of a new nation” whereby there is nothing wrong to teach the facts leading to the independence of the federation of Malaya in 1957 but it is absolutely wrong to call the federation of Malaya as “our nation” in the textbook. We all know that Malaysia was only formed in 1963, and this is the country we belong to. Federation of Malaya was established in 1957! This is the history. WE must respect the history and further, this is about education! If our education of history cannot teach facts, aren’t we teaching lies to our children? This is very important. We can’t do this to our education”, he said.

Tiang added that for Primary 6 history textbook, SUPP discovered that the textbook actually writes that Malaysia consisted of 13 states in 1963! Isn’t it clear that both Federal Constitution and Malaysia Agreement clearly provided that Malaysia was formed by 4 territories namely Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo in 1963? The way the textbook was written is equivalent to alter the history between 1963 to 1976! This is not teaching history! The rest of the chapter is all about the 13 states in Malaysia. When Sarawak formed Malaysia in 1963 we were founding Malaysia in the status of a sovereign state. However, in 1976 how Sarawak was made to become one of the 13 states, we don’t want to go into details here. But if the textbook is teaching facts about 1963, then it should present the real facts to the students.

He added that in 2015 he and Milton blasted the Ministry of Education of the previous government for not taking actions to right the wrong. Likewise today we want to criticise the present Ministry of Education of the new government based on the same principle, particularly the present Education Minister Dr. Maszlee Malik. Although Dr. Maszlee only came into office for a few months, there are many more urgent matters for his attention than the choice of black and white school shoes, like this textbook problems. Aren’t textbook syllabus important? The schools are teaching the students with textbooks! We demand Dr. Maszlee to immediately set up a special review committee to look into the errors in the textbooks. Yes the textbooks were designed and published by the previous government. The present new government must rectify these errors in the textbooks swiftly, instead of tolerating such errors in the history syllabus.

Tiang thanked Dr. Maszlee for making an effort to visit rural dilapidated schools in Sarawak. “This is his job to do so. Nevertheless, we are very disappointed with the announcement he made after the tour. He announced to grant RM100 million to repair dilapidated schools in Sarawak. The RM100 million is in fact taken from the pre-approved budget of RM 2.7 billion by the previous government under the 11th Malaysia Plan. The PH government and their Sarawak MPs used to criticise the previous government for neglecting the needs of Sarawak schools and treated the schools unfairly. But now the PH government education minister had visited the schools and even wept to see their dilapidated conditions. He only continued to use the pre-approved fund to help Sarawak schools, instead of reviewing the budget by increasing its fund allocations. Only the same old budget, no reviews, no increment of the budget for Sarawak schools,” he said.

The Pakatan Harapan has been criticizing the previous government for not treating Sarawak schools fairly, not attending to their needs, slow to fund for their maintenance. Now the education minister is from PH government, why the Minister failed to come up with any new solutions or new allocation of fund?

There shall be no compromise when we come to our education. AS for SUPP, there shall be no compromise in history syllabus. The dilapidated schools in Sarawak are in urgent needs of federal funding to repair and maintain the school buildings, this cannot be compromised! Not the white colour of school shoes cannot be compromised!

No need to drop tears for Sarawak. We Sarawakians had enough of tears in the past. This is not the time for the PH government to play politics. It is time for the PH government to lead the country, to provide more solutions for Sarawak people. We also urge all PH Sarawak MPs and ADUNs to stand together with us to voice our Sarawak needs to the new government to fight for new welfare, new wealth and new fund allocations for Sarawak in this new Malaysia.

This is the people’s voice. We are definitely not setting traps for the PH government, instead we are using this platform to speak for the people of Sarawak!.