Reveal cost for lavish teachers' day bash, MB told

By Zefry Dahalan

SEREMBAN: Negri Sembilan Menteri Besar Mohd Hasan has been challenged to reveal how much the state government had spent on an extravagant Teachers' Day dinner celebration.

Last Saturday's dinner, held at the Seremban Town Council field here, was attended by 16,000 teachers from all over the state.

Paroi state assemblyman Mohd Taufek Abdul Ghani said the bash did not make sense, especially when the Education Department had reduced expenditure nationwide due to a limited budget.

"I received many complaints from teachers that the Education Department slashed various types of allocations for schools, and the reason given was that the budget for this year is very limited.

"But then you spend thousands of ringgit for a one-off event like this where I don't see any holistic outcome, it is a waste (of funds),” he added.

How much for the pop singer?

Taufek said that he was not against giving teachers due recognition, but this could be done through other means such as career betterment courses and so forth.

"Having a big dinner and spending thousand of ringgit to errect giant tents, prepare food, and put up hundreds of buntings with Mohd Hasan's face all over Seremban town is a waste of public funds.

"Futhermore, teachers living and teaching in districts located far from Seremban had to fork out their own money for transport,” he added.

According to the opposition leader, there were many teachers who were reluctant to attend the dinner because of this but had “little choice”.

“They were afraid that there might be repercussions if they did not show up,” said the PAS central committee member.

Taufek also questioned how much the state government had to fork out for popular local artiste Mawi, who staged a performance at the dinner.

The PAS leader also questioned the relevance between a pop singer and Teachers' Day.

'We achieved the target'

Meanwhile, the menteri besar's special officer Shukri Samsudin told FMT that the allegation of wastage was baseless.

He stressed that the state's teachers had contributed immensely towards the improvement of the education standard in Negri Sembilan.

Shukri said when Mohd Hasan was appointed menteri besar in 2004, he also held the education exco post and at that point, the overall performance of students in the UPSR, PMR and SPM examinations was not encouraging.

"Following this, he set a target for Negri Sembilan to be among the top five states for UPSR, PMR and SPM and we have achieved that. So it's only appropriate to have some kind of appreciation for the hard work put in by the teachers,” he added.