PETALING JAYA, Aug 4 ― The Education Ministry should start a dialogue over the continuing row on public university intakes rather than issuing “token press statements” to explain away the controversy, MCA Youth chief Datuk Wee Ka Siong said today.

On Friday, Wee was the subject of a public statement by the ministry, following his recent criticisms on the number of STPM top scorers failing to either secure their courses of choice or even entry into public universities (IPTAS).

“[When] I first helmed the MCA Youth Education Bureau in 2000, a dispute broke out with the then Education Minister Tan Sri Musa Mohamad,” Wee said in his response today. “However, after holding a dialogue session with the Honourable Minister, MoE then solved the problem immediately.”

“Therefore, if MoE can return to dialogue, this will indeed provide a positive outcome for the affected students.”

Wee has been outspoken on the matter, also raising concerns over the apparent decline in the number of Chinese students finding spots in IPTAs over the years following the introduction of the “meritocracy system” and which fell to a low of 19 per cent this year from the 32 per cent before its introduction.

His remarks, however, appeared to be misconstrued by the ministry as him saying only 19 per cent of Chinese students who scored a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 4.0 were accepted by IPTAs, leading it to label them “baseless allegations” in its response.

“A total of 3,545 students received offers to enter the IPTAs. This shows that 99 per cent of those with a CGPA of 4.0 have received the offers and only 39 or one per cent did not,” it said in a statement.

But Wee took particular offence with the ministry’s insinuation that he had been part of the system that allowed the long-running problem to exist, prior to him and the MCA rejecting all government posts after Election 2013.

“I am utterly shocked that the press statement said that I was the Deputy Minister for this Ministry as though the IPTA intake was my jurisdiction,” Wee said, pointing out that the matter came under the purview of the Ministry of Higher Education.

“The intention of the said press statement is absurd as the relevant party who issued the statement clearly did not do adequate homework on the aforesaid.”

The Education Ministry was merged with the Ministry of Higher Education in the post Election 2013 Cabinet revamp.

“MCA Youth is not trying to start an argument with anyone but our wing does hope to help students resolve their problems.

“The MCA Youth Education Bureau is willing to sit and discuss with the MoE on how to overcome this situation, and we hope that the IPTA intake issue will be settled once and for all,” Wee concluded.

Rows over scholarships and intakes are an annually recurrence in Malaysia, when tens of thousands of secondary school leavers vie for limited openings in public universities and scholarships, and which is made more complicated by racial quotas.

According to a report by national news agency Bernama, a total of 68,702 students with Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM), matriculation or foundation studies, applied for places at public universities this year.

Of this, 41,573 applicants (or 60.5 per cent) were offered places.