Johor Baharu - The Johor state assembly was today told that the state government will build 57 new religious schools at a cost of RM122 million to meet the shortage of such schools in several districts in the state.
Religion committee chairman, Datuk Zainal Abidin Osman, said there were now 550 religious schools in the state with 216,980 pupils from the kindergarten level to the Special Class level.
"The shortage of schools was brought up by the assemblymen from Kemelah, Nusajaya and Tanjung Surat. Based on that, the state government decided to build 57 schools which be ready in two years," he said when winding-up the debate on the 2009 state budget here.
Zainal Abidin said priority would be given building the Sekolah Agama Simpang Renggam, Sekolah Agama Pogoh in Segamat, Sekolah Agama Bandar Putra in Kulai and Sekolah Agama Kem Iskandar in Mersing.
Meanwhile, chairman of the committee for agriculture and agro-based industries, Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, said the Johor Agriculture Department gave 4,539 bags of fertiliser and 7,565 bags of lime to 1,463 farmers to help them save banana trees that had been attacked by plant disease.
He said the problem of the disease on banana trees was detected early last year, that is after the large floods, and it involved an area of 2,315ha.
Chairman of the committee on local government, arts, culture and heritage, Datuk Ahmad Zahri Jamil told the assembly of the setting up of a committee on July 21 to handle the problem of illegal factories in the state.
Ahmad Zahri said the committee would compile a data base of factories operating outside the industrial zones besides proposing that the illegal factories be legalised following criteria of the technical department.
Source:
http://www.bernama.com.my (December 10, 2008)