Religious schools need more funds

About 500 people turned up at Parliament today demanding the government increase allocation to religious schools.

KUALA LUMPUR: An Islamic school NGO submitted a memorandum at Parliament today demanding the government increase allocation for religious schools in the country.

The Selangor Islamic Education Solidarity Council, led by its chairman Zainal Abidin Kidam, arrived with nearly 500 supporters at the Parliament lobby at 9am.

He claimed to be representing nearly 100 religious school in Selangor and other Islamic NGOs.

Also present were Selangor executive council members Halimah Ali, Ronnie Liu and PAS education bureau chairman Abu Bakar Chik.

The representative of the huge crowd later submitted the memorandum to Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub.

Speaking at a press conference later, Zainal Abidin said that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s allocation of RM100 million for public religious schools was pale in comparison to their student numbers.

He claimed that currently, there are about 800,000 students studying in religious schools nationwide.

“That is about 30% of the students studying in the country. The allocation is only for government- aided religious school but what about all state-run schools and private religious schools nationwide?

“We estimate that there 2,300 of such school in Malaysia,” said Zainal Abidin.

He also said that due to funding contraints, many parents had to fork out a lot of money to send their children to study in religious schools.

“In rural areas, parents have to spend about RM200 monthly to send their children to religious schools. Parents in urban areas have to fork out between RM700 and RM800 monthly,” said Zainal Abidin.

He urged the government to match the allocation given to religious schools to that of national schools.

“The government should also increase grants for textbooks and teachers. A special allocation is needed to train teachers to teach in religious schools,” said Zainal Abidin.

‘Religious schools not sidelined’

On whether he would submit a copy of the memorandum to Najib, Zainal said,” We will do it later.”

Sharing his views, Liu said that Pakatan Rakyat’s policy is to provide support for all types of schools in the country.

“We will strengthen all religious and vernacular schools when we take over Putrajaya,” said Liu.

Salahuddin also reiterated Pakatan’s stand to provide free education to the people if the opposition bloc wins the federal government in the general election.

The crowd dispersed peacefully at about 11am.

Meanwhile, Deputy Education Minister Mohd Puad Zakarshi dismissed allegation that the government had sidelined religious schools in the country.

He also said that there 382 such schools in the country but only 156 of them are registered with the ministry.

“The schools registered with the ministry obviously are given all the aid needed. Even the ones unregistered, the government pays for the teachers’ salary and other perks,” said Puad.

He claimed that some of these religious schools were reluctant to register fearing that they would lose their influence in their schools.

“The school managament gives all sort of problems out of fear that they will lose influence among the students and parents.

“But we do pass some allocation for these unregistered schools via the state governments. We let the state government to decide how to disburse the funds to them,” said Puad.