KUALA LUMPUR: The government should also ensure that teachers and students of private and Chinese independent schools, who are sitting for major exams, be given the priority to get vaccinated, said Tan Sri T.C Goh, President of the Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Huazong).
He urged this while commenting on the statement by Senior Education Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin, that the COVID-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) has agreed to the Education Ministry’s (MOE) proposal that students sitting for major examinations this year be given the priority to be vaccinated.
The Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin meanwhile revealed that there are 357,000 Form Five students and 47,000 Form Five teachers nationwide.
Goh who is also President of the Federation of Chinese Associations Sabah (FCAS) cum honorary board chairman of three Chinese independent schools in Sabah (Tshung Tsin, Kian Kok and Pei Tsin) asserted that, regardless of public or private schools, they are both key education institutions and are equally prone to the risk of Covid-19 infection as, the virus doesn’t care whether it’s public or private schools.
He noted that Khairy has agreed to MOE’s request to give priority to Form Five and Form Six students in the country who are sitting for exams, to get vaccinated, either by the end of next month or in August. This was due to the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency’s (NPRA) approval of the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 12 and above.
In a statement issued today, while welcoming such a move, Goh reiterated that students of private schools, Chinese independent schools included, who are sitting for exams too should be given the same treatment.
He also noted that the government had recently announced that all the 500,000 teachers in public and private schools will be included in the second phase of the national immunization program. This is excluding the 50,000 Covid-19 patients who were included in the first phase of the said program.
He thus hoped the MOE would ensure that teachers of private schools and Chinese independent schools too will be included in the second phase of the national immunization program, concurrently with their peers from the public schools.-pr/BNN
