Selangor raps MIC over scholarship application figures

Kok: “The number of students who apply for and accept the Selangor education loans is not high because they also have the option of applying for and accepting the National Higher Education Fund Corporation loans which offer far larger sums.

PETALING JAYA, Nov 27 — After trading barbs with MCA on the state’s scholarship figures, Selangor's Teresa Kok is now accusing MIC of lying — that only four Indians received study loans this year. The senior state executive councillor said the allegations were false as the actual figure was actually 28 students.
“MIC Youth Secretary C. Sivarrajah has copied MCA central committee member Ti Lian Ker to warp my good intentioned effort to openly encourage students from all races to apply for Selangor State Government’s no-racial-quota education loans into a ploy to mislead the public about how students of Indian background have supposedly been marginalised.
“The fact is that in 2010, Selangor offered the education loan to 28 students of Indian background and not only 4 as Sivarrajah claims. In his quest to be a hero, he has resorted to deflating the true number of Selangor’s positive efforts by 7 times,” she said in a statement.
She added that the number of study loans offered by the state in 2010 is 525 and not 400 as claimed by Sivarrajah.
Kok explained that only 525 loans were offered because the students have the option to apply for the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN).
“The number of students who apply for and accept the Selangor education loans is not high because they also have the option of applying for and accepting the National Higher Education Fund Corporation loans which offer far larger sums.
“It is thus disgraceful of Sivarrajah to twist Selangor’s education loan which assits students regardless of their skin colour into a racial issue to attack Selangor Pakatan Rakyat,” she said.
She said MIC should instead focus on the racial quotas imposed on federal government scholarships.
“If Sivarrajah and MIC was genuinely concerned for Indian students, they would object to Public Service Department scholarships’ racial quotas instead of silently ignoring it.
“This episode shows that Sivarrajah and MIC is still trapped in an outdated race-based paradigm of their own creation and cannot see beyond their own narrow political interests while remaining blind and indifferent to the genuine needs of all Malaysians as a whole,” she said.
From January till November 15 this year, there were 677 applications from Bumiputeras for Selangor’s education loans, of which 485 were approved; 12 applications from the Chinese of which all were approved; and 53 applications from Indians of which 28 were approved, according to Kok.
The total number of applications this year for Selangor’s study loans was 742, of which 525 were approved, she said.
The PTPTN has run into problems due to bad loans left unpaid by a majority of the some 400,000 whose loans amount to some RM46 billion.