600 out of 1,200 daif schools in Sarawak are ready to be repaired

KUCHING, Sept. 28: About 600 out of 1,200 schools identified as being in the daif category in Sarawak have been completed to date.

Sarawak Minister of Education, Innovation and Talent Development Dato Sri Roland Sagah Wee Inn said that the efforts to upgrade daif schools are being implemented in phases using the allocations provided.

According to him, the RM1 billion allocation previously channelled has been fully utilized, but there are still projects under construction and some of them have not yet gone through a tender process.

"In total, we have completed about 600 schools. There are several categories of daif schools established by the Department of Education, namely from level one to seven. The most daif school is level seven, followed by levels six, five, four, three to one.

"So, the total number of schools identified as being in a daif state previously was 1,200", he said when contacted by media after the Sarawak Non-Formal Education Recognition Launch Council - Community Skills and Productivity came here today.

He said the remaining implementation of the project faced capacity constraints, especially in terms of number of contractors who are competent and able to carry out construction work.

According to him, the Department of Public Works (JKR) is responsible for managing the tender process for the project, but contractor capacity and labour force in the construction sector are still limited.

"So that's why it depends on our own capacity. We don't have enough competent contractors to do the school work. There's a lot of skilled labor, but there are also general workers and so on. So we don't have enough workforce", he said.

"The shortage of manpower, including skilled workers and general staff, also affects the ability to carry out the remaining projects.