Don’t pass the buck, Najib told

Responding to the move to pump gambling profits into the coffers of vernacular and mission schools, stakeholders say the government should not pass its responsibility to businessmen.

PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has been reminded not to “outsource the government’s responsibility to the private sector” with regard to the funding for vernacular and mission schools.

Yesterday, Najib announced that a minimum RM100 million of gambling profit would be channelled to these schools annually through a fund called “Community Chest”.

The fund is run by a consortium of tycoons that paid over RM2 billion for billionaire T Ananda Krishnan’s Pan Malaysian Pools Sdn Bhd (PMP) in July. It would be spearheaded by Lim Kok Tay of gambling giant Genting Bhd.

Commenting on this, Tamil Foundation president S Pasupathy said the government should take more responsibility over vernacular schools and not ride piggy-back on the efforts of the business community.

“It is a very good move but the government must go above this to assist vernacular schools. It is the government’s responsibility to uphold the public school system. Najib simply cannot outsource his basic responsibility to the private sector,” he added.

The funding, he said, must be used to upgrade school facilities such as computers, libraries and human resource development as opposed to building new buildings.

“That is the government’s responsibility. The government is responsible for providing such basic capital expenditure like building construction,” he pointed out.

On the move being an attempt to win over Chinese and Indian voters, Pasupathy said that Najib must show sincere efforts to win votes instead of merely engaging in such “piecemeal” actions.

He cited a long-standing problem that has plagued Tamil schools – relocation due to oversized classrooms.

Pasupathy said that the federal government could display its sincerity by assisting in tackling this problem.

“For example, the biggest Tamil school in Selangor, the Simpang Lima Tamil school in Klang, has always had the problem of overpopulation. So the Selangor government approved land for another Tamil school to be built in Taman Sentosa but the federal government has yet to grant the licence to build a school there,” he said.

He stressed that the government still had a big role to play in tackling the root problems facing vernacular schools.

Such problems, he said, cannot be solved by funding and the people should not be “hoodwinked” by such things.

‘Evidence of gross discrimination’

Meanwhile, Dr Kua Kia Soong, who has been involved in the Chinese school movement since 1983, said the funding did not change the fact that Tamil and Chinese schools should be treated as national schools.

“As usual, the Barisan Nasional government is trying to push its civic responsibility to businessmen who are reliant on the government,” he said.

He added that the funding was not sufficient as the sum needed to be divided over close to 2,000 schools.

Echoing Pasupathy’s concern of oversized classrooms, Kua said that “the problem of oversized classes in Tamil and Chinese schools is a scandal in the education system”.

“If the other national schools do not need philanthropic assistance, why do the Chinese and Tamil schools need it? Isn’t this evidence that there is gross discrimination in financial allocation as well as the building of new schools?” he asked.

Kua also doubted that the latest move would secure votes for Najib, saying that the problem was a deep-rooted one.

“The Chinese and Tamil communities have been paying ‘double taxation’ (income tax plus education tax) for decades and they won’t be satisfied until their mother tongue education is treated as part of the national system,” he said.