PETALING JAYA: DAP National Vice-Chairperson Teresa Kok has questioned the government’s rational of spending money on the National Service Training programme (NS) instead of funding overseas scholarships for deserving students.
In a statement, Kok said Prime Minister Najib Razak “broke the hearts” of 744 Public Service Department (JPA) scholarship students who will now have to study at local public and private universities as part of the government’s cost cutting measures.
“The first question that the government must answer is why must it deny all the recipients the promised opportunity to do their degrees at world renowned universities?”
“Why can’t the government allow at least 50 per cent of the students to realise their dreams of pursuing a university education at top universities?”
Kok said when the NS was postponed for one year in 2015, Najib said it would save the government RM400 million and had the programme continued to be deferred, at least 200 or more bursary recipients could be sent overseas.
The Seputeh MP said a JPA overseas scholarship was the main means for many non-bumiputeras to study at world renowned universities as they were not eligible for Mara overseas scholarships.
Now, she lamented, many non-bumiputera students would lose the opportunity to study overseas via government scholarships.
She asked Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Wee Ka Siong whether sending the nation’s brightest to top universities or continuing the NS was more important, in reference to Wee’s statement that sending all 744 recipients of the national bursary overseas would cost the government RM1 billion.
Kok said while cost-cutting measures due to falling oil revenues could not be avoided, the education sector should be the last to be affected, if at all.
“I call on the Prime Minister to rethink his decision on the bursary recipients.”
Yesterday, Najib in his Budget 2016 recalibration speech announced that 744 JPA scholarships would be given to recipients to study in local public and private universities.
The JPA will continue to sponsor the top 20 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) scorers to study anywhere in the world as well as 200 scholarships for engineering students to pursue degrees in South Korea, Japan, Germany and France.