KUALA LUMPUR – The Universiti Malaya Students’ Union (UMSU) has called on the university’s administration to address the housing crisis affecting nearly 10,000 students immediately, failing which the union will organise a “joint protest” with students from other universities.
Its representatives sent its third memorandum to the university’s management this morning, affirming its frustration with the allegedly weak solution to the issue of insufficient hostel accommodation.
The union made eight demands in the memorandum, covering housing problems, welfare, and student rights.
The document was received by Mahadi Sibon, special officer to the vice-chancellor.
According to UMSU finance secretary Ahmad Zarfan, the union will not hesitate to stage a protest in October if its demands on housing problems are not solved.
“The protest will likely be after the semester starts. We will have a session with the new students to raise awareness on this matter.
“The management does not care about us (students), unless we do something that can jeopardise their reputation,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, in the same press conference, a student representative from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Zal Hasmi, said that the students there are in the same boat.
“We are demanding three things to be done before new students enter, which is to speed up the opening of UKM apartments, establish a rental housing system, and implement a transparent college assessment system.
“If no parties want to take this issue seriously, we ourselves will urge for those authorities to be held accountable,” he said.
Zal also said that physical solidarity through the #GerakanManaKolejKami will take place at UKM in mid-October.
“This movement was organised due to a lack of action taken by the UKM student union. They have more power to initiate this issue but choose not to,” he alleged.
He added that they launched an online petition on the matter yesterday and had garnered around 200 signatures by this morning.
Recently, UMSU urged the management to address the systemic issues behind insufficient accommodation on campus as such matters have presented problems to students for several years.
In a statement issued by UMSU, the group pointed out that UM only has an accommodation capacity of 12,067, a figure that does not tally with its student population, with postgraduate students alone numbering about 16,734.
Subsequently, the union said that more than 10,000 senior students had been forced to seek private accommodation outside the campus. – The Vibes, September 9, 2022
