Gerakan off the mark: Dept

KOTA KINABALU: State Education Director Datuk Jame Alip took exception to criticism levelled against the department by Sabah Gerakan Youth.Its chief Cleyrance Lee Chen Peng was reported as saying the lack of specialists in processing tenders to repair schools involved in fire and natural disasters was purely an excuse and cannot be accepted in the context of the modern information technology era.

"Lee being in one of the Barisan Nasional party components should support the government's policy. He should not put out false statements without consulting the department for the purpose of cheap publicity and his own political benefits," said Jame on Friday.

"I think that Lee is outdated and he failed to follow up with the latest development.

"In his statement, he had suggested that we get staff from the Public Works Department through secondment and State Federal Development Office in solving our problems.

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"We had already implemented what Lee had suggested. The Public Works Department and Education Ministry were not able to help us due to insufficient staff.

"The Public Works Department is capable of processing the tenders only if the allocations were channelled to them in order to make payments. Besides, we had been given the authority.

"The allocations had been given to us but we could not go on with the procedures.

Therefore, we decided to request help from the Sabah Project Team and with the RM5 million allocations, they agreed to help us and will be used to repair the damages in SK Kiulu due to the fire incident, SK Gadong, Beaufort and SK Bawang, Tamparuli which was damaged due to landslides," he said.

Jame said currently, they are in the process of completing the specifications as well as tender for the three mentioned schools.

According to him, based on the Standard Operating Procedure, the Education Department is not allowed to process tenders, as they do not have any technical officers such as engineers, architects, administrative and diplomatic officers and others.

"Therefore, Lee should not have said that the Education Department had disappointed the State political leaders who had fought for the department's rights and authority from the Education Ministry especially in terms of school maintenance.

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"Of course, we are very thankful to all the political leaders who had fought for us and as the State Education Director, I will also play my part in asking for allocations for poor schools and to report about the damages faced by the schools throughout the State.

"I would also like to thank Lee for his fight and I hope it will not be just it. Recently, Penampang was hit by flash floods and he should have come and offered his assistance but had failed to do so," he said.

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