KUCHING: There are 1,020 dilapidated schools in Sarawak including 450 which are in critically bad conditions, Assistant Minister for Education and Technological Research Dr Haji Annuar Rapaee (pic) said.
To address the problem of dilapidated schools, he said, several steps had been taken either by the Federal Government or by the State Government.
“Under the Rural Transformation Initiative, this year the State Government had spent RM17 million to upgrade and repair 47 schools in the whole of Sarawak.
“We also spent RM4 million to repair and to buy furniture for 53 schools which were affected by floods, “he said when replying to Ir Aidel Bin Lariwood (BN-Sadong Jaya) in the August House yesterday.
Dr Annuar, who is also Assistant Minister of Housing and Public Health, said under the State Budget 2019, Sarawak would spend RM81.7 million to upgrade these dilapidated schools. He pointed out that the budget by the Federal Government was only RM100 million for the whole nation.
“In other words, during the Budgets 2017 and 2018, we were promised RM1 billion in the special budget to address the issue of these dilapidated schools; RM500 million was for this year and another RM500 million for next year. But these have been slashed by the Federal Government,” he said.
Asked whether the State Government wanted to have autonomy on education, Dr Annuar pointed out that education was under Item 13 of the Federal List of the Ninth schedule of the Federal Constitution.
In other words, the obligation or the responsibility of education was purely under the Federal Government, he said.
On how much had been spent by the Federal Government over the last few years on education in Sarawak, Dr Annuar said for 2016, it was about RM3.7 billion including all the emoluments, maintenance as well as operation.
It was RM 3.9 billion for 2017 and increased to about RM4. 3 billion last year. “For us to take over education, we have to keep in mind how much we have to spend each year. I think it will be a huge amount that we will have to spend. As much as we want to, it is not simple to take over education. We also need to think of the economics of running education,” he said.
