PETALING JAYA, Aug 22 — PKR urged Putrajaya today to determine the reasons why PTPTN borrowers struggle to repay their loans before dishing out more proposals to punish them.
At a press conference here, several party leaders voiced concern that the recent plan to list defaulters on Bank Negara Malaysia’s bad credit list had not been shelved as reported but merely delayed.
PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli (picture) said the government should conduct research instead and determine the root cause behind the failure of many borrowers to repay loans they took from the National Higher Education Fund Corporation or PTPTN.
“Until now, we have not seen any information or research done by PTPTN or BN (Barisan Nasional) to understand what is the real reason why a majority of the PTPTN borrowers face challenges to pay PTPTN,” Rafizi said.
“Surely if you are formulating policies to manage this problem we need to know the root cause. I’m interested to know what exactly is the problem,” the lawmaker added.
Rafizi suggested that the federal government do a breakdown of PTPTN borrowers’ backgrounds and factors affecting them, including their monthly incomes, success rate in obtaining jobs related to their qualifications and the quality of the public universities, in order to determine the possible issues they face.
“Even if you don’t get a full database of one or two million PTPTN borrowers, at least we need to know a large sample for us to decide and then we would understand the income shape and economy class of the PTPTN borrowers,” he said at a press conference.
He added it was only when the reasons behind the failure of borrowers to repay their loans are determined that the problem can be suitably addressed.
“Do your proper job first, go and study this, put it on a white paper and then present it to the public and Parliament so we really understand what’s the problem,” he said referring to Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh.
PKR communications director Nik Nazmi Ahmad said the ongoing problems with the PTPTN were the very reason why his party proposed its free education policy in the last general election.
“Because we know PTPTN will not be able to solve the financial issues for the students,” the Seri Setia state assemblyman said to reporters.
The plan to list borrowers on the CCRIS, or Central Credit Reference Information System, was announced recently by Idris as a measure to help the PTPTN recover loans.
It immediately earned criticism from politicians across the divide, including Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.
Yesterday Khairy confirmed the shelving of the proposal via his Facebook and Twitter accounts, saying the Cabinet rejected the idea at its weekly meeting.
“Baru selesai mesyuarat Jemaah Menteri. Alhamdulillah, PTPTN tidak akan meneruskan cadangan untuk menyenaraikan peminjam dibawah CCRIS. Terima kasih pada PM & Menteri-menteri Pendidikan kerana mendengar suara-suara orang muda,” he wrote on Facebook.
[Translation: Just finished Cabinet meeting. Alhamdulillah, PTPTN will not proceed with the proposal to list borrowers on CCRIS. Thank you to PM and the ministers of Education for listening to the voices of the youths.]
Responding today, Rafizi and Nik Nazmi insisted that Khairy’s remarks were in conflict with media reports, which said the proposal had only been “delayed”.
