OYA: A Permata Taska Home Nursery Course was held for four days at Oya Community Hall here which ended yesterday.
The course attracted 98 participants comprising youths, mothers and some grandmothers in the Dalat constituency.
In her speech at the course closing ceremony, Minister of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Child hood Development, Datuk Hajah Fatimah Abdullah said at the present only 3,383 children aged four years and below in the state are attending registered institutions, namely KEMAS (Community Development Department), JPNIN (National Unity and Integration
Department), private ones registered with Welfare Department and PERMATA under the Prime Minister’s Department.
“The number is far below the targetted number of at least 15% or 24,600 children set by the government by the year of 2020,” she said.
Fatimah believed that the hesitation on the part of parents to send their young children to the centres is also a contributing factor.
“I find that the parents especially those with children of two years old and below were unwilling to send their chidlren to the centres because they don’t want to part from them at a very young age,” she said.
As most of nursery-related services are done at home, she said her ministry has came up with the initiative of publishing a ‘Guide book of Nurturing the Children’ at home hopping that these children would get a quality early childhood education as it is should be.
“Children at this very young age are very receptive to information and I liken their absorbing ability like sponge. And our state government also stresses on the importance of our childhood development or early intervention with the creation of the portfolio in the ministry to look into the development of the early childhood education in Sarawak,” she said.
She also hoped that in future the course would also be open to fathers or male participants as both the parents are the first teacher of their children.
“I hope the participants would make full use of the knowledge gained from the course by putting them into practice and not a lukewarm kind of thing and only excited or very spirited just during or shortly after the course. Actually the course is only limited to 50 participants but for Dalat I wanted it to be double,” she said.
At the function Fatimah also presented Minor Rural Project grants totaling RM7,500 to IPD Dalat Islamic Body (RM2,500) for the Awal Muharram celebration, PERKEP-Police Family Association (RM2,000) & IPD Dalat AMANITA (RM2,000) and PSKPP Dalat/Mukah Tennis Team (RM1,000).
Also present were Oya Sub-District Administrative Officer, Yusof Hossein, who represented Dalat District Officer, Early Childhood Educationist Nurturer Association of Sarawak (3PAKS), Hajah Juiter Abang, Penghulu Pawi Haji Ramli, heads of departments and local community leaders.
