GEORGE TOWN, April 23 — The government should remove the racial restriction for lower-income students seeking to enter the matriculation programme, a PKR Youth leader suggested today.
PKR Youth exco Ong Jing Cheng said the policy for the matriculation programme should be changed to assist B40 households instead of by ethnicity.
“Priority should be given to those in the B40 group regardless of whether they are Bumiputera or not,” he said in a statement today.
He said a list of matriculation application results should also be made publicly available to ensure transparency.
“If the majority of those who are eligible for the matriculation programme using the B40 criteria are Bumiputera, then they should be accepted but non-Bumiputera who also qualify under the B40 criteria should not be sidelined,” he said.
DAP Youth also supported the proposal to review the matriculation programme intake policy.
DAP Youth international secretary Satees Muniandy said the federal government should create another 7,000 matriculation places for non-Bumiputera students who excelled in the SPM rather than taking any of the existing places away from Bumiputera applicants.
“The government should make the 25,000 places exclusive for Bumiputeras so that the Bumiputera rights are protected,” he said, adding that the new openings would allow competition on merit.
However, he disagreed with Ong that these should be limited to B40 students and insisted it should be entirely based on performance.
“By creating merit-based matriculation seats for non-Bumi students, a more definite solution could be reached, which can be termed as win-win for all,” he said in a statement today.
He admitted that this will have financial implications for the federal government but pointed out that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure no one was left behind in terms of education.
Both Ong and Satees were responding to Education Minister Maszlee Malik’s statement that the government will maintain the matriculation intake policy of a 90 per cent Bumiputera students and 10 per cent for non-Bumiputera students.
While Bersatu leaders supported Maszlee’s statement, DAP’s P. Ramasamy questioned the need for the current administration to maintain a policy from the Barisan Nasional (BN) era.
The Penang deputy chief minister II accused Bersatu of being “entrapped in the mindset of Umno” by maintaining a policy introduced by Umno.
The Perai assemblyman has since called on all Pakatan Harapan (PH) leaders to openly discuss the issue to come up with a more progressive policy.
