Where is the special allocation for Chinese schools? MCA Youth wants its immediate disbursement from PH government

MCA Youth hereby questions the Pakatan Harapan federal government as to why until today, it still has not disbursed the special allocation for schools of various streams as outlined in Budget 2018, especially the RM50 million and RM15 million for SJKCs and SMJKs, respectively. This issue is closely watched by the Chinese community? Is the Ministry of Education (MoE) facing any inexpressible difficulties? We want the Ministry to answer with clarity to the public at large.   

Former Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak in tabling Budget 2018, had clearly stated that government-aided schools, including SJKCs, SJKTs, religious schools and mission schools would each receive a special allocation of RM50 million. The then government further agreed to emulate the 2017 mechanism to allocate RM15 million to SMJKs, after a request was made by the then MCA leadership under Dato’ Sri Liow Tiong Lai and Datuk Seri Ir Dr Wee Ka Siong. As such, basically, the MoE only needs to execute the funding as agreed, allotted and approved by the previous government.

Last year, MCA in co-operation with the MoE, had started to help disburse the allocations for SJKCs and SMJKs in various states commencing 2 November 2017. All the cheques were fully distributed by December 2017 and the schools could then embark on various repair and upgrading works during the school holidays.

Deputy Minister of Education Teo Nie Ching announced in September 2018 that Minister of Finance Lim Guan Eng had approved an allocation of RM50 million. However, after two months when the school holidays are just around the corner,  there is still no sign of any transfer of funds from Ministry of Finance into the bank accounts of school boards. What had actually taken place?

The public at large is now watching closely on the whereabouts of the said allocation. We would also like to remind Nie Ching, who used to spare no words when criticising MCA and Barisan Nasional with regards to special allocations previously, to recollect her previous attitude and guts and take it up aggressively with the Ministerial officials, and not be so quiet like now. This is not her usual self.

Since DAP had previously set the standards for BN and MCA, it should rightfully demand the same standards from its own people. Unless DAP wants to admit that is a party of failure and only good at lip services.  

Nicole Wong Siaw Ting
MCA Youth Chairman

-MCA online-