KOTA KINABALU: Likas assemblyman Junz Wong and former member of parliament Datuk Dr Othman Minudin expressed their full support to Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Datuk Masidi Manjun’s recent call for educational power to be delegated to Sabah State Government.
Junz concurred with Masidi that such power was necessary in order for Sabah to develop and implement educational programs and projects at our own pace with great efficiency and effectiveness.
Two days ago, Masidi had blamed Putrajaya for the failure to implement federal government programmes in the State because the authority to decide lies with the federal government and the power is not given to Sabah State Government.
“Schools (projects) in Sabah are neglected due to issues like cement problem…if the power to decide is given to the director (State Education director), we have ample and able contractors to carry out these projects, but we still have to get the authorisation from Putrajaya.
“How wonderful it would be if the authority to decide is given to us (Sabah) so that we can implement the Education Ministry’s programmes successfully,” Masidi added.
In this regard, Junz proposed that Sabah should set up its own Education Ministry.
“In fact Sabah should set up our own Education Ministry to ensure Sabah does not fall short of education development based on Sabahan needs via not just on education projects or programs but also the need of students and teachers.
“For instance, Sabah Education Ministry can recruit Sabahan teachers to teach in Sabah coping with issues of shortage of qualified teachers in Sabah. We can implement our own educational programs such as alternative native language programs to preserve Sabah beautiful native cultures and languages,” Junz said.
“This is beyond politics. I support Masidi’s call regardless of our political differences because it is in Number 20 of our 20 points agreement that education should be under the power of state government. This is in the best interest of Sabah’s future in education developments,” he added.
Meanwhile, Dr Othman Menudin said that when he was the MP for Kinabalu during the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) government in the early 1990s, he often raised the same issue in the Parliament.
He said during that time, the federal government’s allocations for the education sector were only approved and released towards the end of the year, either in November or December, which was unfair to Sabahans.
“The reply from the deputy education minister to my question in parliament at that time was that we (Sabah) received a lot of allocation from the federal but we Sabahans don’t know how to utilise the funds,” he recounted, adding that it was impossible to fully utilise the allocations which were only released at the end of the year.
Angkatan Perubahan Sabah (APS) youth chief Denis Gimpah also expressed full support for Masidi’s call.
“I fully agree with what Masidi said. This is one of the main issues that has brought us into Pakatan together with strong credible leaders from UPKO in July 2012, as we found that nothing or very little has been done by Putrajaya,” he told The Borneo Post yesterday.
“Now, it is becoming apparent that the people, including Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders, have realised that what we have written in our manifesto during the recent general election is true. We didn’t leave UPKO for the opposition or Pakatan simply because of minor issues. Rather, a lot of issues have been ignored by Putrajaya, particularly during Mahathir’s tenure,” he said.
He added that Sabah has always been left behind due to the cloak of bureaucracy created by Putrajaya.
Putrajaya, Gimpah said, should be sincere and give Sabah and Sabahans the power to manage their own resources and develop the State according to the State’s.