Teacher Postings & Transfers - Without Breaking Up Married Families

Press Statement
by M. Kula Segaran

(Ipoh, Friday): The Ministry of Education has decided to post 332 teachers from Penang, Kedah and Klang Valley to Johore.  These graduate teachers and their families are very unhappy because it will mean that their families will be broken up, and they will have to maintain two establishments.

The Ministry of Education of course has the right and power to post teachers anywhere in the country which needs their service. Moreover, it seems to be true that these teachers had willingly signed contracts with the Ministry which makes them directable.

However, the problem shouldn’t be viewed strictly from the point of legality alone.  We should also consider the social and economic implications of the posting.

Is it a healthy thing to separate wives and husbands and parents from their young and teenage children for long periods of time?  In many cases, the teachers concerned also have to worry about their aged parents.

Surely there are enough social problems in our society emanating from broken families that we do not need to have more such problems.

Surely the Education Ministry should have taken into account the marriage status of the teachers in the first place when they were signed up to do their graduate courses.

Wouldn’t it be better and more reliable to post unmarried graduate teachers to Johore from other states?

We have got to look this issue realistically.  Can teachers posted to Johore be good teachers when most of time they have to worry about what is happening to their spouses, children and parents?  Wouldn’t they be so anxious and perhaps so sick with worry most of the time that they will be ineffective teachers? Thus, isn’t the whole posting exercise be rather counter-productive?

Unless, of course, in the cases of spouses being also government servants, they too could be transferred or posted to the same town or area.

The Education Ministry should reconsider the postings very carefully and come up with a sensible, humane and socially responsible solution.

The decisions by the Cabinet on Wednesday, June 15, 2006 on the matter, while pretending to resolve the issue, is actually a failure.  It doesn’t create new alternatives for an amicable solution. It is in fact an entrenchment of the status quo, trying to put all the blame on the teachers concerned.

As the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) has pointed out, the Education Ministry should look into the planning of teacher supply.  The very fact that two teachers had found out that the school they had been transferred to had an excess of teachers, tells us a great deal about the bureaucratic mess the Education Ministry and the State Education Departments often get themselves into.

The authorities should now wisely find out how many schools involved in the transfer exercise are in fact in excess of teachers, including specialist teachers, before they mess up the lives of teachers and their families, and break up families, in utter contradiction to what the Prime Minister says about family unity and values and what ministers say about the importance of family togetherness. Or are their utterances merely pious, hypocritical platitudes?

Education Ministry Hishamuddin Hussein Onn should come up with a win-win situation, not a No-win situation.  For a start, he should transfer some of the Ministry of Education and State Education Department bureaucrats to different states, far away from their homes and families, and see what their reactions will be.

In the final analysis, we should not break up families to satisfy a legal or bureaucratic requirement or convenience.  It will be counter-productive.  It will also betray that the Education Ministry lacks imagination.  Also, teachers should not be victimised by the silly mistakes of Ministry bureaucrats, some of whom do not seem even to be able to count.

Perhaps if Hishamuddin had spent more of his time on educational matters and teachers’ problems, instead of on UMNO Youth politics, such a mess might not have arisen, in the first place.