by Teresa Kok Selangor State Senior EXCO and Member of Parliament for Seputeh 27 November 2010
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 marginalized.
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!
Furthermore, the total number of education loans offered by Selangor in 2010 is 525 and not the trumped up 4000 figure provided.
I reiterate that the Selangor State Government education loan has no racial quota imposed. All students are judged based on their academic merit and family household income.
The number of students who apply for and accept the Selangor educations loans is not high because they also have the option of applying for and accepting Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional (PTPTN) loads which offer far larger sums.
It is thus disgraceful of Sivarrajah to twist Selangor’s education loan which assists students regardless of their skin colour into a racial issue to attack Selangor Pakatan Rakyat.
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This episode shows that Sivarrajah and MIC is still trapped in an outdated race-based paradigm of their own creation and cannot see beyond their own narrow political interests while remaining blind and indifferent to the genuine needs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.
(The correct figures are actually 12 out of 525 recipients of Selangor education loan in 2010, and not 4000 as NKKhoo had mistakenly thought at the time. Original false info came from statement by MCA’s Ti Lian Ker. The full statistics can be seen on Teresa’s blog.
(Unfortunately, various newspapers and politicians have knowingly or unknowingly picked up the 4000 number and been using it to criticise Teresa.)