PETALING JAYA, Nov 2 — Education groups are calling for stern action against the parties responsible for the mismanagement of the Education Ministry’s RM4 billion contract for the 1BestariNet project.

The National Parent-Teacher Association chairman Prof Mohamad Ali Hassan said a thorough investigation needed to be carried out and the findings must be transparently reported to the public.

"This is a serious affair and it is shameful for the ministry. A penalty needs to be imposed on those responsible,” he said.

"The company involved should also be blacklisted from conducting any IT related projects or activities with the government or public sector.”

Mohamad Ali voiced his concern over the periodical monitoring, evaluation, and auditing by the Education Ministry in keeping the project in check.

He said the ministry should have managed the matter at an early stage and should have awarded the project to a company that would have planned with due diligence.

"Now that it has failed, there is a need to find out the cause of the failure and why there has been no corrective measures.”

The technology-in-education project was awarded to YTL Communications Sdn Bhd via open tender in 2011.

Voicing the grouses of parents and teachers alike, Malacca Action Group for Parents in Education chairman Mak Chee Kin was frustrated that the ministry was only visiting the schools involved in the project after many complaints had been made.

"Parents and teachers have been highlighting the ineffectiveness of 1BestariNet since the beginning ... many teachers and principals have been short-changed.

"Some Parent-Teacher Associations in schools had to spend their own money to have better Internet connectivity,” he said.

Mak urged the government to bring those responsible to court.

"This is another case of contract mismanagement and public money wasted. Despite the poor service and complaints from stakeholders, I was surprised the contract was even extended.”

The National Union of the Teaching Profession president Kamarozaman Abd Razak, however, said the ministry should work closely with government-linked companies, such as Telekom Malaysia and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, to come up with a plan to solve the problem.

"While this should not have happened, I believe we should not be playing the blame game,” he said.

"Investigations will be carried out and we hope the ministry can speed up the process so the teachers can start utilising the facilities.”

Kamarozaman said because of connectivity problems, the learning process of students with the teaching programmes involving information and communications technology (ICT) was hampered.

"The students have fast Internet connection at home, but the Internet connection is slow at school. So this takes away the excitement for them to learn ICT,” he said.

Deputy Education Minister Chong Sin Woon said the findings by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee would be brought to the ministry for further action.

He said the ministry needed to conduct an in-depth study to come up with a solution.

"We take the matter seriously and we abide by the recommendations of the PAC.

"We will work closely with the ministry and authorities to rectify the problem,” Chong said.