Education Minister Musa Mohamad today refused to comment on the request by the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) for a copy of the comprehensive report by the independent committee set up to investigate allegations of racial segregation in schools.

When asked if the ministry would respond to the NUTPs request, Musa said, I do not want to comment on this anymore.

We will leave it to the NUTP, he added during a press conference at Universiti Terbuka Malaysia (Unitem) this morning.

Meanwhile, the NUTP said it received a copy of the report summary yesterday but still insisted on getting a copy of the full report in order to answer all charges against it.

Last Tuesday, Musa was reported in Utusan Malaysia as saying that the complete report could not be revealed in order to protect the identities of the interviewees, most of whom were said to be NUTP members.

According to Musa, the ministry is responsible for keeping the information confidential so as to avoid negative implications on those who provided the committee with information and to avoid possible court actions against the ministry.

Following the independent committees report released last Thursday, which concluded that racial segregation in schools is minimal and not deliberate, the NUTP has come under fire from parties who were named in its memorandum on racial segregation in schools.

Union threatened

Two school principals have threatened the union and its secretary-general, N Siva Subramaniam, for defamation while parent-teacher associations of five schools in Taiping have lodged police reports against Siva and NUTP president Tengku Habsah Tengku Petera for allegedly being seditious and racial.

According to newspapers today, the police plan to call on Siva and Habsah as part of their investigation but did not say when the duo will be contacted.

The police are said to be investigating the case under Section 4(1)(b) of the Seditious Act 1948 which carries a maximum three years jail or a RM5,000 fine, or both.

Musa was at Unitem today to sign a memorandum of understanding to support bachelors degree programmes for non-graduate teachers at the university.

According to the memorandum, the ministry will send 3,700 teachers per year to study at Unitem for the next five years beginning from the March 2002 intake.

This is reportedly part of the ministrys ambition for all secondary teachers to be university graduates by 2005 and for at least 50 percent of all primary school teachers to be graduates by 2010.