Stop the race game in education

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-g On Jul 15, 2013

(FMT) – It’s time for the Education Ministry and all political parties to focus on meritocracy, instead of race, in providing equal opportunities for all qualified Malaysian students for places in public universities.

Calling on the ministry to do away with its racial focus, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said there was no reason to deny equal opportunities to Malaysian students with top results, including with a CGPA 4.0, local university places in courses they had sought.

He slammed the ministry for harping on short-sighted policies that would cause not only Malaysia to lose out, but also mental anguish annually to the young talents, who were deprived of their future.

He said the ministry must assume full responsibility for not being fair to ensure qualified students were allotted places.

Claiming public loss of confidence in professionalism of the ministry, he called on the government to appoint an independent body such as an international auditing firm to ensure that no qualified students loses out.

“How can we prepare the young for the future or the future for our young when we permit such painful injustice?

“After 56 years of independence, it is time for all political parties and the ministry not to focus on race but on why qualified students cannot get places in public universities on merit,” stressed Lim, the Bagan MP, in his statement here today.

Depriving qualified students from places in public universities, he said, was a waste of top talent that would drive away the country’s best and brightest brain to abroad.

He noted that it would exacerbate the brain drain and make it harder for Talent Corporation to generate a brain gain.

“It will make it easier for other countries like Singapore to happily snatch away our crème de la crème,” cautioned the DAP leader.

He chided MCA and MIC with their annual national obsession on race profiling by arguing the serious issue of deprivation of university places in education solely from a racial perspective when it should be based on equal opportunity, excellence and performance.

He accused both political parties of perpetuating the racial game annually to create a dependency syndrome to make both MCA and MIC relevant.

“Instead both should have institutionalised clear criteria for entry that was transparent,” stressed Lim.