Dong Zong challenges Muhyiddin's 'liar' label

Chinese education rights group Dong Zong, which was labelled as a liar by Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, today furnished statistics to back its claim that both Chinese and Tamil schools have been marginalised by the government for years.

“The education ministry has been implementing monolingual education policy, resulting in the marginalisation of Chinese and Tamil schools, this is an indisputable fact,” said Dong Zong in a statement.

It said the Chinese community has been enduring such discrimination, forcing them to raise funds to support the development of Chinese schools even to the extent of shouldering the salary of temporary teachers and administrative expenses like utility bills.

“The problem of teacher shortage in Chinese schools has been going on for 40 years, this is an iron-clad fact.”

Elaborating, Dong Zong pointed out that Chinese schools were only allocated 7.2 percent and 3.6 percent of the total education fund under the Eighth and Ninth Malaysia Plans, respectively.

Yesterday Muhyiddin said the teacher shortage issue raised by Dong Zong is a “big lie”.

He told some 500 teachers from vernacular schools that the issue is not exclusive to Chinese schools as national schools also face the problem of insufficient English language teachers.

[More to follow]