Special committee set up to reunite teachers with spouses

Over 1,800 teachers will be transferred to schools closer to home.

KUALA LUMPUR: A special committee chaired by the Education Ministry’s director-general has been set up to reunite teachers with their families.

Education minister Mahdzir Khalid revealed that 1,848 applications had been approved so teachers could work in the same state as their spouses.

He added that the first batch was selected from a total of 7,000 applications, where priority was given to those who had been separated from their spouses for the longest period.

Mahdzir said in cases where teachers could not be relocated to the same state as their spouses, their spouses would be transferred to where they taught instead.

“Most importantly, these teachers will teach in the same area as their families,” he said at a press conference.

Mahdzir said that there were approximately five per cent of the 370,000 teachers nationwide who were separated from their families.

Some teachers, he noted, had been separated for between five to seven years, a timeframe he described as “too long.”