The Penang chief minister said for Indians to be empowered, they required not only the proper maintenance of the many Tamil primary schools in the country, but also for a secondary school project to be given approval.
“There is no reason why the education ministry refuses to permit a secondary Tamil school even though there are secondary schools that use Arabic, English or Mandarin as a medium of instruction,” he said.
“The federal government only needs to spend on building the school since the Penang state government is willing to offer land for free,” he added in his Deepavali message today.
In 2013, Lim announced that the Penang government was offering a parcel of land in Butterworth to build the country’s first Tamil secondary school.
He had sent a letter to then deputy prime minister and education minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is now PPBM president and Pakatan Harapan deputy president, to give approval for the project.
Deputy education minister P Kamalanathan then reportedly called on Indians to enrol their children in Tamil primary schools first before asking for a secondary school.
Education department director-general Khair Mohamad Yusof also rejected the state’s application for the school in a letter dated January 8, 2014.
According to Lim, the letter stated that there were no provisions under the Education Act 1996 to build Tamil secondary schools.
Lim today said the government should also ensure that Indian students at public universities, were allowed to pursue “good courses”.
He said Barisan Nasional (BN) leaders had recently said Prime Minister Najib Razak’s announcement of additional 700 places to be made available in public institutions of higher learning for Indian students, qualified as a Deepavali gift.
“This will only be a Deepavali gift if the 700 university places include good courses like medicine, engineering accountancy, law and dentistry,” he said.
He also said Malaysian Indians could only be convinced that the MIB was not only a “general election gimmick” if blue identity cards for citizens were issued to stateless Indians in the country.
He added that there should be a Hindu endowment board set up in every state to look after Hindu temples such as the Penang government was doing.
Launched in April, the MIB is a 10-year plan covering basic needs, education, housing, employment, entrepreneurship and social inclusiveness. It is being implemented by a special unit in the prime minister’s department.
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2014/04/02/mic-did-not-ask-for-tamil-secondary-school/
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2014/02/26/pas-also-keen-on-tamil-secondary-school-in-penang/