KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 4 — Former education minister Maszlee Malik has raised RM150,648.61 in donations to help stranded university students.

The fund dubbed #siswajagasiswa also received 4,763 applicants as of 7pm yesterday.

The amount was successfully raised within 24 hours, following the Higher Education Ministry’s announcement on October 2 that all public universities would be postponing ongoing student intakes and registrations.

This led to a firestorm of criticism online against the ministry, as many students said that they had already made travel arrangements to their respective universities.

On his official Twitter page, Maszlee thanked all of those who had contributed to the fund.

"Malaysia is great. Thank you, Malaysia!

"As of 7pm, October 3, the accumulated amount successfully donated by Malaysians for our student emergency fund reached RM150,648.61. This amount we managed to collect in less than 24 hours,’’ said Maszlee.

In an earlier post, also yesterday, Maszlee stated that the fund had helped 50 critical applicants so far and further stated that a full report on how the funds were distributed would be published.

Maszlee also stated that the fundraising campaign ended yesterday so that the monies could be disbursed to the affected parties as soon as possible.

The announcement by the Higher Education Ministry came after the number of Malaysia’s new Covid-19 cases skyrocketed to three digits.

As of yesterday, Malaysia recorded 317 new cases, with total cases breaching the 12,000 mark.