Cut-backs leave 7,000 temp teachers dry

The Education Ministry has 'insufficient funds' to support EPF contributions for temporary teachers.

KUALA LUMPUR: While the revelations of the Auditor-General’s Report 2010 detailing the millions of ringgit squandered is yet to settle, a new disclosure is near paralysing the teaching sector.

Some 7,000 temporary teachers in the country have had their Employee’ Provident Fund (EPF) contributions, bonuses, maternity and other benefits cut by the Education Ministry.

The ministry apparently has no money. To counter this “insufficiency”, the ministry has converted the employment status of temporary teachers from “contract for service” to that of “contract of service”.

The terms of the new contract effectively exempts the ministry from paying EPF, bonus, maternity and other basic benefits.

Revealing this today, Serdang MP Teo Nie Ching said the teachers had become “convenient scapegoats” in the government ‘s move to compete with the opposition in doling out financial aid.

“When the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration saw the opposition handing out financial aid to deserving segments of society, it vowed not to be left behind and rushed to hand out RM100 to secondary and primary school students, never mind that no resources had actually been allocated for that purpose,” she said.

She took the ministry to task, asking if the free money came from cutbacks on teacher remunerations.

“Is the BN administration really cash-strapped? If it is, then how is it that BN leaders can just waltz into schools handing out RM100 each to 5,532,650 primary and secondary school students, using up about RM550 million?

“Where did that money come from? How can they now claim that they did not have sufficient funds to pay temporary teachers their benefits?” she asked.

Government has ‘insufficient funds’

Teo was referring to Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong’s comment to newsmen yesterday that the move to restructure the contract of temporary teachers was because the ministry had “insufficient funds”.

She also asked if the funds distributed to students came from cutbacks to perks for temporary teachers.

“Is that amount derived from the monthly savings of RM200 per head snatched away from 7,000 temporary teachers?

“But that only adds up to about RM16.8 million per annum. The numbers just don’t add up, and the sooner the government stop taking the rakyat for fools, the better, ” said Teo, who is also DAP’s assistant publicity secretary, in a statement today.

She said the issue of temporary teachers arose because the government could not provide sufficient numbers of qualified teachers to schools.

She said although temporary teachers are accorded a lower status than qualified teachers, their job scope and responsibilities are almost the same.

But despite their job responsibilities, there is a huge difference in salaries and benefits between temporoary and qualified teachers.

Many had questioned this disparity. As such, most temporary teachers harbour dreams of being admitted into teachers’ training centres and acquiring official teacher status.

But although the Education Ministry had announced in March this year that temporary teachers with more than two years’ teaching experience would be admitted into teachers’ training centres, most were unable to gain admission.