Sagah: Disappointing the over 1,700 shortlisted teacher-hopefuls include non-Sarawakians despite commission’s earlier pledge

SIBU (Oct 7): The over 1,700 shortlisted candidates under the special teacher recruitment drive for Sarawak will include 300 applicants with teaching qualifications from outside the state.

Face-to-face interviews will be held for the candidates from tomorrow until Thursday (Oct 8-10) in Kuching, Sibu, and Miri.

In disclosing this, Minister of Education, Innovation and Talent Development Dato Sri Roland Sagah Wee Inn expressed disappointment in the Education Service Commission (SPP) for not keeping its promise of allowing the 1,733 vacancies available under the special recruitment drive to be filled by Sarawakians.

“I personally feel very disappointed because this is supposed to be an exercise for Sarawakians only. But now they said they will also interview those from other parts of Malaysia.

“Of course, the authority is in the hands of the SPP. We have no say in it, but I think this is like they are not keeping their promise.

“We have no say that they cannot interview others from other parts of Malaysia, but let them do that at a different time if they do need that, if we do not have enough teachers again, especially for the option subjects.

“But let it be that this time it is for Sarawakians only. Whether we meet the standard or not, of course they have their own criteria, whatever the criteria will be,” he said told a press conference here today.

Sagah pointed out that the ministry had written to the commission previously seeking for the exercise to be for Sarawakians only.

“But apparently they will start interviewing from tomorrow.

“So it is very disappointing for them to do that. We hope they will keep to the initial discussion that we have that this be kept to Sarawakians only,” he said.

Sagah pointed out the recruitment drive received almost 16,000 applications from Sarawakians alone and another 2,000 applications from other parts of the country.

The applicants were then required to undergo the Teacher Candidate Eligibility Test (UKCG) online before being called for the in-person interview, he said.

“Sarawakians alone that were successful in the UKCG were about 12,000 out of the almost 16,000.

“After that process, so many people passed the test and the vacancies available are only 1,000 plus. When they looked through again, we were informed that actually they will need about 2,000 teachers.

“But there were too many who passed the UKCG test, so they put another condition that only those with 3.5 CGPA (cumulative grade point average) and above will be called for an interview.

“After they did that, actually 13,000 passed the UKCG. So, they filtered again. So there will be about 2,000 who will be called for a face-to-face interview. The last figure they gave us is that there will be 1,733 vacancies available,” he said.

Sagah shared his hope that all the vacancies would be filled by Sarawakians.

“That’s what we hope. So I just hope that SPP will do their best to accommodate all these Sarawakians,” he added.