The Cabinet meeting tomorrow should extend by another two days the five-day Parliament special meeting beginning on Monday to allow the Education Minister Radzi Jidin and the Higher Education Minister Noraini Ahmad to make their Ministerial statements about the future of education and higher education under the Covid-19 pandemic.
To leave out education and higher education ministers responsible for the core issues in the Covid-19 pandemic from making Ministerial statements followed by debates by Members of Parliament is a major mistake and omission, for it shows that the Cabinet is not aware of the importance of education and higher education for the future of Malaysia!
This omission is particularly inappropriate as only yesterday, former de facto Law Minister, Zaid Ibrahim had called on Radzi Jidin to resign as Education Minister for the deplorable state of education in Malaysia.
Radzi should defend himself, and there is no better place to do it than in Parliament, followed by a debate by MPs.
The former law minister had accused Radzi of having no clear direction or made no major decisions in the past two years, like the replacement for the now-abolished Standard Six examination since he became Education Minister.
Members of Parliament also want to know about the announcement that schools would reopen in stages from Sept 1 as some students are struggling with Teaching and Learning at Home (PdPR) due to lack of access to online classes; why only 12,000 of the 150,000 laptops promised by th Government to students from B40 families had been distributed under the Cerdik initiative, with the rest to be distributed in September; why many teachers have yet to be vaccinated; and many other questions.
The portfolio of higher education is also important if Malaysia is not to become a failed state, although we have become the world’s worst-performing state in the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Higher Education Minister should give her Ministerial statement as to how her Ministry is to learn from one important lesson of the Covid-19 pandemic – to restore meritocracy in the public universities to raise the level of good governance in the country.
(Media Statement (3) by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, 20th July, 2021)