“Involvement in politics is not a problem, but do not go up on stage for the opposition and go overboard in the speeches,” he told reporters after receiving a courtesy call from Japan’s Ambassador to Malaysia Dr Makio Miyagawa at the ministry here today.

He said the action to be taken against the teachers depended on how much cooperation they gave to the ministry looking into the case.

Mahdzir has been reported as saying that only a small number of the 435,000 teachers in the country were actively involved in opposition parties and that the ministry was monitoring the situation.

He also stressed that it was not a problem if a civil servant made a comment on social media but it should be a constructive comment.

“It is not a problem if the criticism is constructive, such as on the issue of students who had to sit on the floor because there were no chairs, and when we inspected the school, there really were no chairs… that is okay,” he said.

On his meeting with Miyagawa, Mahdzir said the Japanese envoy had presented a US$69,000 (RM304,600) donation from the Japanese government to the Teacher Education Institute’s international languages campus (IPGKBA).

Mahdzir said IPGKBA was chosen as the recipient under the Grant Assistance for the Cultural Grassroots Project (GCGP) for its Japanese language teacher education programme.

“The contribution will be used to upgrade language laboratories and training rooms in the campus as well as other facilities,” he said.

The training and service programme for the Japanese language, between 2005 and 2013, produced 67 teachers who have since been posted to fully residential secondary schools and day secondary schools in the country.