KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 — MCA’s new central committee will deliberate on a proposal to seek 20 per cent of alcohol and gambling taxes as additional allocation for Chinese education, freshly-elected president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said today.
He said the proposal, raised by a delegate during the debates on the last day of the party’s general assembly today, will be discussed at his administration’s first CC meeting.
“We will take the proposal into consideration, along with all other proposals raised during the debates. We want to forward proposals to the government that it can actually implement,” he said when door-stopped after the close of the general assembly.
Earlier during the debates, Parit Sulong central delegate Tan Sri Lee Kim Yew made the proposal to deal with chronic funding issues that have long affected Chinese schools across the country.
“The biggest problem of Chinese education is allocation. I urge this general assembly to push for 20 per cent of all taxes collected from alcohol and gambling to be used as additional allocation for Chinese education,” he said.
MCA deputy president and former deputy education minister Datuk Wee Ka Siong said Lee’s proposal “makes sense”, but noted that it would be entirely up to the government to decide on what source of funds it can use to raise allocations for Chinese schools.
“The argument is that since only the Chinese and the non-Muslims contribute to sin taxes, it is not controversial since it’s going to Chinese schools. It makes sense,” he said when met outside the San Choon Hall where the party assembly was held.
“The bottom line is that we need to increase the allocation for Chinese schools, be it from the treasury or from sin taxes,” he added.
Allocations for Chinese schools has been a constant point of contention between the government and Chinese-centric political parties and NGOs who argue that not enough is being given to vernacular education despite having conformed its syllabus to the national education system.
Under Budget 2014, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak set aside RM50 million each for Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools, mission schools, government-assisted religious schools, boarding schools, Maktab Rendah Sains Mara (MRSM) and Sekolah Agama Rakyat (SAR).
Weewas reported late last October, however, to have urged the government to provide a reasonable allocation for 81 national Chinese conforming schools left out of next year’s budget.
A 2012 report listed a total of 1,291 government Chinese primary schools out of a total of 7,709 operating across the country as at 2012.
The 60 Chinese secondary schools nationwide are privately run by Dong Jiao Zong, otherwise known as the United Chinese School Committees Association of Malaysia, as opposed to 1,906 government-funded national secondary schools.
