Letters by Lye Hoke Tan
The unfair PSD scholarship awards issue, it happens all the times. I graduated from Chung Ling High School in Penang at 2004. Before 2004, I didn’t notice much about this problem, I just heard it from my high school teachers complaint it to us, I didn’t know it was so serious until it happened to my friends around.
Well, I can see this happens every year. Every year, to the same victims (Chinese Top Students), at the same time(after SPM results released), the same thing happen continuously in our country. Every year, I see the problems occur non-stop, it seems like unsolved cases even though those ministers, parties promised it could be solved. I have lost my confidence over their creditability, how can you give scholarship to someone, who his/her result is poorer than the others, just because of the skin colour.
Is PSD blind? They failed to see As every where every year, PSD prefer B and C? Maybe, as our government always has funny and “incredible” systems to rule this country. The funniest thing is, they DARE to repeat this “carelessness” every year, non stop. The media reported the same issue every year, what a shame!
The same thing happened during 2004, I have a friend, she got 13A1, she was also one of the top student had lunch with our ex-PM, Pak Lah, but the point is she failed to get JPA. When she told us she failed to get it, we got shocked. If top student like her by having 13A1 failed to get JPA, then we wonder how are we going to get it? Maybe we have to blame for our parents aren’t Datuk & Datin.
The next day, she went to the press, same stories like what it happens today. So, the next few days, she got the JPA. This is how our PSD works, OMG!
Those smart guys failed to get straight As, some of them just got 10As (but still much more better than those who are able to get JPA), so we chinese students definitely will fail to get the scholarship.
Okay, fine. They continue Form 6. They did well in form 6, they got scholarship bond from Singapore. They study there, graduate there, work there and get PR there. Some of them went to Hong Kong, Australia, Japan with scholarship bond too. Some of them will never come back to work in Malaysia, they get the PR there and stay there.
Again, we produce professionals for foreign country. Is our country still developing? If yes, don’t we need professionals to develop this country? or maybe we have more than enough professionals. So, it doesn’t matter where this professionals go.
To get a scholarship, sometimes it depends on your skin colour, your family background. You have to be strong in politics, you have to be rich, your parents have to be Datuk or Datin. This is how PSD works!
It is so hard for non-bumi to enter Local Uni due to the quota system (They can lower the local uni standard just to fulfil their quota. Sighs!) , so the blindness of PSD doesn’t sound strange to us any more.
Thank you!