The National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) wants to meet the Education Ministry over an 'unfair' hardware allocation policy to under-enrolled schools or school with less than 150 students in facilitating the just-implemented language switch.

Its secretary-general N Siva Subramaniam told malaysiakini that those schools were not given LCD projectors, but replaced with 34-inch television sets.

"The Education Ministry has explained that as most of these (under-enrolled) schools do not have regular electricity supply, the projectors costing about RM15,000 each could easily be damaged. Hence, they were replaced with tv sets," he said.

However, according to Siva, a survey conducted by the union shows that most of the under-enrolled schools are receiving stable electricity supply and they do not rely on generators anymore.

"Most of these schools get the power supply from Tenaga Nasional Berhad and they are not affected by the electricity supply problem. So they are not supposed to be provided with only tv sets. That will affect teaching as a whole," he said.

Letter to ministry

Urging the ministry to be fair to all schools, Siva said the union will send a letter to the ministry very soon to request for a meeting to discuss the matter.

The ministry is providing the hardware to assist teachers in implementing the switch where Standard One, Form One and Lower Six students are now taught Maths and Science in English, beginning this year.

The government has allocated RM5 billion to be spent over a period of seven years for the implementation of the language switch.

Last month, the MIC also cried foul over the ministry's allocation of LCD projectors and laptop computers for the language switch after the party learned that under-enrolled schools and those on private land might not receive them.

The issue was raised in the party's Tamil school action council meeting and MIC has expressed its grave concern as it would affect 300 out of the 520 Tamil primary schools in the country.

MIC president S Samy Vellu had also criticised the ministry for reneging on its promise.

"Although MIC has accepted English to teach Science and Maths in Tamil primary schools, the Education Ministry has not kept its part of the bargain," he said.

MIC forms committee

A special committee headed by the party's education bureau head Prof T Marimuthu has been formed to study the issue and to submit a memorandum to the ministry within one month.

Marimuthu told malaysiakini this week that the council, which comprises many headmasters, will meet on Feb 26 to formulate a plan of action on the matter.

The use of English in teaching Science and Maths was first introduced in May last year by the Umno supreme council after Prime Minister and party president Dr Mahathir Mohamad's proposal to bring back English-medium schools was rejected by his own party.

However, the language switch proposal did not go down well with many groups, especially those involved in vernacular education as they argued that it would not help upgrade the standard of English.