Education Ministry contractors mostly outsiders

Kota Kinabalu: Members of the Sabah Bumiputera Graduate Education Services Officers Association wants the Education Ministry to review the appointment of contractors for school upgrading projects in the State.

Association President Drs Hamid Abdul Rahmat said Wednesday the delay or stopped school projects are not due to co-ordination problems between the appointed contractor and consultants, but mainly due to main contractor problems.

"Most of the main contractors are appointed by the Ministry and we do not know where they come from, as most of them are not locals, except for sub-contractors who are locals but face financial constraint in carrying out the projects.

"We hope the Ministry will review its appointment method and give the contracts to local contractors in Sabah so that there would be less problem and sub-contractors would also be able to look for the main contractors when a problem arises," he said.

He was commenting on a Daily Express report on why the SMK Bandaraya 2 project was delayed, as explained by Tourism, Culture and Environment Assistant Minister, Datuk Bolkiah Ismail at the State Legislative Assembly, Tuesday.

Bolkiah said the project was delayed due to co-ordination problems between the appointed contractor and consultant.

Hamid said many other schools in the State faced similar problems, and that it was time for the Ministry and Government to look for alternative solutions.

Contractors who had been identified as having problems, be it financially or in administrative aspect, should also be banned from getting future contracts in the education field.

"The Government has to look for effective measures to ensure that those which had been identified as irresponsible or blacklisted do not make use of other names or companies to get back into handling similar projects to avoid repeating issues," he stated.

Apart from that, he said the Ministry must ensure they analyse each applying contractor's financial status, to see whether it is stable or not.

"If we overlook all these aspects, those affected would be students, they would have trouble improving and concentrating properly in school, while schools in the State will also never be listed as a high performing school," Hamid said.

(News sources:Sabah Daily Express on Thursday,28 April,2011)

Links:http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=77821