GEORGE TOWN, Nov 4 — The Penang state government will remain firm in its stand to support vernacular schools, Deputy Chief Minister II P. Ramasamy (DAP — Perai) said today.

He said the state will not change its stance even if the federal government was to decide to abolish vernacular schools.

“We do not agree that vernacular schools are the cause of disunity as the issues about unity is more complicated than the existence of vernacular schools,” he said.

Advertisement

He added that it was not new that some parties are raising this issue of abolishing vernacular schools due to their respective political agenda.

“In reality, Chinese and Tamil schools are not a threat to unity as these schools consist of various races,” he said in reply to an oral question by Satees Muniandy (DAP — Bagan Dalam) at the state legislative assembly.

He said there were a total of 3,552 students of all races, other than ethnic Chinese and Indians, studying in vernacular schools in Penang.

Advertisement

“This showed that the vernacular schools are a platform to develop the spirit of unity among people of all races,” he said.

He said recently, he visited a Chinese school with 600 students and 100 of the students are Malay students.

“Nationally, we can see an increase of between 15 and 20 per cent of non-Chinese students in Chinese vernacular schools,” he said.

He said there were also ethnic Indians attending Chinese vernacular schools.

“This goes to show that all these calls to abolish vernacular schools are due to politics,” he said.

He said the issue of unity and efforts to unite the people should be looked at from another angle instead of blaming it on vernacular schools.

“It is a larger issue than vernacular schools, we are talking about the people’s thinking,” he said.

He said the state government has continued to provide cash aid to all schools in Penang including the vernacular schools.

“This year, the state channeled RM8.4 million to mission schools, Chinese schools and private schools while another RM2 million to Tamil schools,” he said.

He said the state government also channeled funds to Islamic schools by allocating RM2.5 million to Sekolah Agama Rakyat that included Maahad Tahfiz, Muslim kindergartens and pondok schools.

“Starting from this year, 170 national primary and secondary schools also received allocation of RM3 million to conduct repair and renovation works on school infrastructure,” he said.