By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, June 20: Sarawak Teachers Union (STU) is urging unemployed graduates residing in the State who are interested in teaching to join the profession by applying for acceptance into the recently-announced special one-off teacher recruitment programme.
Its president Adam Prakash Abdullah described the said programme as an opportunity which should not be missed for the graduates to serve in the State.
“At the moment, Sarawak is facing a shortage of 3,000 teachers. Therefore, we hope with this announcement on the teaching vacancies, the shortage issue will be rectified and schools will be able to operate on a full teaching capacity,” he said in a statement today.
He further urged the Ministry of Education (MOE) to look into the list of unemployed graduates in Sarawak who have completed their education degrees from local universities and are still awaiting placement in schools.
“These graduates are ready to work as they have the necessary academic qualification. We hope the Ministry and the Education Service Commission (SPP) can come up with very clear instructions and guidelines for the applicants as we want to minimise failures at the application level so that we can fulfil the vacancies as soon as possible,” he added.
Earlier, Senior Minister of Education, Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin had announced that MOE will hold a special one-off teacher recruitment with 18,702 slots for Education Service Officers (Pegawai Perkhidmatan Pendidikan, PPP) grade DG41 beginning July 7 this year.
At the same time, Adam also requested the State Education Department (JPNS) to assist teachers who have fulfilled the requirements for transfers, by placing them appropriately based on their applications in the next transfer exercise.
“This will provide these teachers the opportunity to move to other schools or stations after serving several years in their current schools before the new postings of teachers are carried out. We hope this one-off exercise will help ease the shortage of teachers in Sarawak.
“We also hope that the MOE will consult with the JPNS (Sarawak Education Department) to place the appropriate teachers in the schools based on the requirements of the schools. We would like to see all schools have sufficient numbers of teachers based on the subjects required by the schools,” he emphasised. — DayakDaily
