The Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) wants the federal government to allocate adequate funds to provide better facilities for government-aided and independent schools in the state.

Its president Dr George Chan said the requests were made in petitions by the various school boards to the party as education was under the federal government's purview and such schools followed the national education policy.

"There are more than 200 government-aided Chinese schools and over 160 government-aided mission schools with all having a multi-racial student population but unfortunately many of the buildings need urgent repairs, upgrading, extension or relocation due to increasing (student) population," he said at a dinner in Miri last night attended by Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in conjunction with his visit to Sarawak.

Dr Chan, who is deputy chief minister, said bumiputera students accounted for about 50 per cent of students in urban Chinese schools while in mission schools the percentage was even higher with 70 per cent to over 90 per cent in the rural areas.

"The people are happy that the federal government has allocated RM50 million each for government-aided Chinese and mission schools as well as Tamil schools in Malaysia," he said, adding that Sarawak received grants of RM9,037,000 for government-aided Chinese schools and RM19,733,925 for governement-aided mission schools last year.

- Bernama