KUALA LUMPUR – The government should get private higher learning institutions to pose lower fees seeing that they are conducting long distance learning as part of the Covid-19 SOPs, said Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman (independent-Muar).
In his Budget 2021 debate speech today, the former youth and sports minister said the government had allocated RM300 million as a form of assistance to these education institutions.
“Many youths are disappointed that university fees have not been reduced even though they are conducting online distance learning and are not using university facilities. They have to fork up money to pay the cost of internet connectivity because they are studying at home.
“Another point is that there are too many last-minute decisions – they were told to go home, then had to head back to their universities and then told to go home again. The travelling costs for students in Sabah and Sarawak were very high.”
He added that Putrajaya should have made the fund conditional – where universities must lower their fees to access the allocation.
Furthermore, he called for the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration to take after the Barisan Nasional (BN) regime in allocating RM400 million to supply laptops for students nationwide via an open tender scheme.
Even though he thanked the PN government for allocating RM150 million for that initiative, Syed Saddiq said the amount is not enough.
He then called on the ministry to implement windfall tax on rubber gloves companies, such as Top Glove Corp Bhd and Supermax, seeing that they have made “a killing” this year due to the Covid-19 crisis. – The Vibes, November 18, 2020
