By Nigel Edgar
KOTA SAMARAHAN, April 4: Deputy Education Minister Teo Ni Ching today urged the state government to quickly fulfil its promise of a RM1 billion loan to fix dilapidated schools in Sarawak.
She said her ministry had yet to receive the money.
“I hope we can get it (money) as soon as possible. We already have a list of dilapidated schools to be fixed that would benefit from this allocation, and I believe they have been agreed upon by the state government,” Teo told reporters during a working visit to SK Sebandi Matang near here this morning.
She said she had followed up with the state government and had urged them to expedite the loan as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, she said the federal government had approved RM100 million to repair 34 dilapidated schools in the state.
Teo said this list did not include the remaining 207 critically dilapidated schools in the state. Those would be fixed with the promised RM1 billion loan from the state government.
Two of the schools that would benefit from the RM100 million allocation are in Samarahan district. They are SK Tanjung Apong, which she visited earlier this morning, and SK Sebandi Matang.
She said six classrooms and four boys toilets and four girls toilets would be built for each of the two schools with a ceiling cost of RM2 million each.
Teo said the project would be implemented through open tender, meaning contractors who could offer the best price would most likely get the project.
She said at the moment, the Public Works Department (JKR) was still in the midst of preparing the necessary documents for the open tender, which would be carried out at the end of this month.
She said if all goes well, work on these two schools would be completed by the end of this year.
“We will be using the Industrialised Building System (IBS) for both school projects because time is of the essence.
“We want to complete these projects as soon as possible so that the students could use the new buildings and facilities for next year’s session,” shared Teo. — DayakDaily
