Banjarmasin, S Kalimantan (ANTARA) - While the City of Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, still categorized as red zone, distance learning (PJJ) activities inevitably should remained to be applied, said head of the Education Office Totok Agus Daryanto.
"Because of COVID-19 pandemic, learning process in schools has been shifting to distance learning (via online mode)," he said here, Saturday.
He explained that there is no way to conduct face-to-face learning in such situation. "It is impossible that we sacrifice the health and safety of students," he said.
He asked the public to understand the policy, although many parents have complained about this problem.
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He also said that the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic needs quite a large budget, including Rp6 billion of the city's education budget should be diverted for the containing of the deadly virus outbreak.
"So we lost Rp6 billion of our budget as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, " he said added that the budget is not only originated from the local budget (APBD), but also from Special Allocation Fund (DAK).
"For physical construction of schools, for example, about Rp1 billion for elementary school SDN Sungai Andai 3 had to be canceled this year as the fund was withdrawn for handling COVID-19," Totok pointed out.
However, he said, it was understandable because handling COVID-19 was more important for the safety of everyone.
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