By Joseph Tawie. Published by Free Malaysia Today on 23 May 2013.
Sarawak, which is the largest state in Malaysia, has only 212 government-run clinics. According to the Social Statistics Bulletin Malaysia 2012, this included only seven rural clinics (Klinik Desa), 197 health centres and eight 1Malaysia clinics.
Expressing his surpise, Ba’ Kelalan assemblyman Baru Bian said in comparison Perak which has about the same population as Sarawak had 328 clinics of which 242 were rural clinics (Klinik Desa). “(Even) Pahang, the largest state in Peninsula Malaysia but with an area less than a third of the size of Sarawak, has a total of 324 clinics, 243 of which are rural clinics,” he said yesterday while debating the address of Yang Dipertua Negeri Sarawak.
“Whichever way one looks at it, it cannot be denied that Sarawak has not been getting her fair share of allocation, resulting in deprivation of adequate healthcare for her people. “The people deserve the same standard and accessibility of healthcare as that received by their fellow citizens in West Malaysia but it seems that this will continue to be denied to them for many years yet,” he said.
Fifty years ago, then prime minister of Malaya Tunku Abdul Rahman said that one of the principal objectives in forming Malaysia was to further the economic development of the Borneo territories so that their standards of living and technical skills might be raised, and a firm basis provided for accelerated economic growth. He announced that “measures would be introduced to accelerate industrial development in the Borneo territories, and to minimise the disqualifying effect of free play of the economic forces so that the gap between a relatively backward state and the advanced would be narrowed and not widened.”
Bian said: “Half a century after the formation of Malaysia, the ethnic communities of Sarawak are still not able to integrate into the economic system of Malaysia. “At this 50th year mark, it is appropriate that we examine the extent to which Sarawak has benefited from the economic progress of Malaysia, given that prior to the formation of Malaysia, the political leaders of Malaya made many promises, tacit or expressed, regarding the potential diffusion of socio-economic development from Peninsula Malaysia to Sabah and Sarawak,” he said.
Poverty, education interlinked
Bian also touched on the issue of poverty in Sarawak, saying that while statistics showed that the situation had improved in 2012 as compared to 2009, he was still skeptical. In 2009 poverty levels stood at 5.9%. This figure dropped to 2.4% in 2012. “Whilst I would dearly like to believe this statistics, my observations during my trips in the rural areas and in the interior of Sarawak give me reason to doubt the accuracy of this figure. “The standard of living of a population is causally related to their educational attainment, which in turn determines their levels in the occupational hierarchy.
“In Sarawak, even to this day, the indigenous people, with only primary education or a lack of formal education, are relegated to jobs at the bottom end of the occupational hierarchy such as skilled agricultural workers or elementary workers. The Labour Force Survey Report Malaysia 2010 shows that Sarawak has the second highest number of workers in the labour force with no formal education that is 94,000 workers, which accounts for 22.6% of the national total.
“The figure for Sabah is even higher, and in total, both the Borneo states account for 55.5% of the workers in the Malaysian labour force with no formal education. “Worse still, there are 242,000 Sarawakian workers with only primary education, who account for 23% of the labour force of Sarawak and 12.8% of the labour force of Malaysia. “The number of workers with no formal education combined with those who have only primary education account for 31.9% of the Sarawak labour force and 35.4% of the national labour force,” he said.
‘Illiterate workers’
He pointed out that Sarawak accounted for only about 8% of the total labour force of Malaysia, but within that small fraction, Sarawakian workers accounted for 35.4% of the country’s functionally illiterate workers. This disparity, he said, bodes poorly for Sarawak in relation to its standing and competitiveness within Malaysia.
“With such a large proportion of the Sarawak labour force having inadequate education, how can the government hope to achieve its high-income economy goal by 2020? In fact, the energy-intensive SCORE region in Central Sarawak has plans to attract 1.2 million foreign workers over the next decade or so.
“Already, there are 600,000 foreigners in Sarawak and of these no less than 240,000, it has been estimated, are illegal immigrants from Indonesia and elsewhere. This leads to various other problems, which have been brought up here before in this August house,” he said.
He said that workers with no formal education combined with those who only have primary education are classified as ‘functionally illiterate’ by the World Bank. He said the majority of them currently worked in the primary or agriculture industry and in secondary (or manufacturing) and tertiary sectors as unskilled or elementary workers.
“Whatever mechanical or technical skills they may have acquired will not prevent them from being marginalized when micro-electronic processes are introduced to their work places in the near future,” said Bian, pointing out that skills are becoming obsolete more rapidly, and the demand for continuous skill training for the current workforce will be tremendous.
He said around 51% of this portion or 123,420 of Sarawak’s labour force are less than 35 years old and would still be alive by 2040. “The government needs to provide adequate training for them in community colleges so that they can acquire some form of skills and functional literacy to survive the Knowledge-based economy of the future,” he said.
According to the Social Statistics Bulletin Malaysia 2012, there are only three community colleges in Sarawak – Kuching Community College, Mas Gading Community College and Branch Betong Community College – with a total enrolment of 182 students. “Sadly there are only three community colleges in Sarawak. I urge the government to seriously address the needs of the 123,420 workers who will need to be trained,” he said.
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