Teachers union wants internet allowances for remote teaching

GEORGE TOWN, 19 Sept 2020:

The National Union of The Teaching Profession (NUTP) Peninsular Malaysia has proposed utility allowance for civil servants be included in Budget 2021.

President Aminuddin Awang said the initiative should be taken to help civil servants, including teachers, to bear part of the utility costs while working from home.

“We see that we are in a new era now, with more than 40 sectors implementing working from home among civil servants. When they work from home, there are certain costs that have to be borne by the civil servants themselves.

In the future, when ‘Home Based-Learning’ (home learning) and ‘Home Based-Schooling’ (home education) are held, there will be some costs that need to be borne such as Internet costs,” he told reporters after officiating the Closing Ceremony of the National Day and Fly the Jalur Gemilang 2020 celebrations at the Institute of Teacher Education (IPG), Penang campus.

He also said NUTP is currently drafting a sabbatical leave application for IPG lecturers which will be presented to the Education Ministry (MoE) in the near future.

He said the issue of sabbatical leave emerged since 2019 when IPG lecturers no longer received special leave like teachers but only got annual leave.

He said, sabbatical leave is important to give space to IPG lecturers to conduct studies that can enhance professionalism and produce studies that have a positive impact on the educational excellence of the country.

Apart from that, Aminuddn hopes MoE will continue to work with NUTP to reduce the workload of teachers. He said, the work process is heavy and it is feared that it can affect the focus of teachers in schools.

“In any field, there is the respective workload. In the context of teachers, there is a lot of work not relevant to the duties of teachers…I plead for a reduction of the burden so that teachers can focus on carrying out their responsibilities in educating young Malaysians.”

– Bernama