Friday, July 16, 2004

5% UNIVERSITY PLACES FOR FOREIGNERS

The Government wants foreign students to form at least 5% of the total enrolment in undergraduate programmes in the country. There are currently 36,000 foreign students pursuing higher education courses in the country and most of them are enrolled in Masters and PhD programmes in public universities. Most of them are from China, Indonesia, India and Thailand. Higher Education Minister Datuk Dr Shafie Mohd Salleh said the move was important to make education “a good commodity” and to make Malaysia a regional centre of educational excellence. The chinese has a proverb - "If you don't even have enough raw food to eat, yet you insist to pickled it." What it means is: if we ourself can't even feed our own, how could we boast to being able to accomodate and feed others?

At our own backyard, we bred social injustice to the population at large; the political masters have a responsibility to ensure, strictly, to make sure that all childrens must be provided with the basic education, including their needs up to university. Yet, we boasted that we can spare 5% university places for foreigners. Don't you think that foreigners do read our newspapers and does know our predicament? Why does the political masters like to boast all the time? Why can they be humble and work towards achieving our nation's need - the need of the rakyat, like, medical care, university education for the masses who have the requisite qualification for entry to university? Is it our Culture and Core Values to be such boastful and proud - is that what Malaysia Boleh is all about?

The Ministers are making the Malaysians a laughing stock to foreigners, especially Singaporeans.

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