Sophia Laka
BINTULU (April 29): The closing of all educational institutions in Sarawak’s Covid-19 red zones will be affecting the private schools as they would not be able to fully earn from school fee payments, said a private kindergarten principal Sophia Laka.
She said government schools may not be affected by the closure, but private schools, such as the one she manages, need to pay for operation cost and other expenses to run, as well as pay teachers their salaries.
“For the private (educational) institutions however, we are surviving with school fees paid by parents, which are used to run our operation and pay our teachers’ salary.
“Even PdPR (home-based teaching and learning) is conducted as according to the original lesson, parents are not happy to pay the full fee as they share the responsibility to teach as well at home, and at the same time juggle between their work commitment and parenting responsibility,” she said.
According to Sophia, not all parents work from home, so they would still need ‘tadikas’ or kindergartens to open to leave their children at when they go to work.
“They will be exposing their children to more risks by sending them to unregistered baby-sitter or child care centres out there, or even some parents have to bring their children to office,” said Sophia.
She was commenting on the recent announcement by MoE that all educational institutions under the ministry that are in the state’s red zones would remain closed till May 10 following a surge of Covid-19 infections in the state.
Sophia said the government has to see the important role of private institutions particularly kindergartens, not only serve to provide education but also as a second home to keep the children safe when their parents go to work.
“The re-opening of kindergartens is highly required to keep us sustained in this pandemic.
“MoE should come out with stricter SOP (standard operating procedures) rather than to totally close kindergartens in the red zone, this is not a lockdown, business shall continue as usual, including us the private institution,” she said.
Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) on Wednesday said the closure of all educational institutions in Sarawak’s Covid-19 red zones which was supposed to end on May 3, would be extended to May 10.
This covers all educational institutions under the MoE and all categorised as private educational institutions registered under the ministry including international schools.
On April 19, Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg had announced that all schools in Sarawak’s Covid-19 red zones have been ordered to close for two weeks effective April 20, after reports of infections in schools in the state.
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