He said the government had spent a lot of money on PTPTN loans so that poor Malaysians could study at local or overseas universities and ultimately earn a higher income.

“Unfortunately when they came back, many of them didn’t want to repay the loans they took.

“I’m ashamed but they are not. They are earning an income which can allow them to pay very well, they just don’t feel like paying,” he said at a lecture at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) today.

Mahathir said it only cost RM100 a month to repay the loan which wasn’t much for someone earning a RM2,000 salary.

“Yet they don’t pay. Why? Because they don’t have integrity, they are not trustworthy.”

When things like this happened, he said, such individuals would be seen as a typical example of a particular race, thus affecting others from the same community.

The repayment of study loans under PTPTN was among the issues raised in Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) 10 election promises which it said it would fulfil within its first 100 days in power.

The coalition promised to allow an extension period for repayment until a borrower’s salary reached at least RM4,000 a month. It also pledged to lift the travel ban on the thousands who had defaulted on their payments.

Mahathir said those who failed to repay the money borrowed from others shouldn’t get upset when people refused to lend them any more money.

“I’ve lent money to friends and relatives who haven’t paid me back. They smile when they meet me but they don’t care. They don’t feel it is their duty to repay the money I loaned them.

“But when you establish a reputation like that, it affects your own people and community because people don’t trust you. When your own people don’t trust you, you can’t progress in life.”

Later, Mahathir launched the Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology Day at UTM as well as the Residensi UTMKL building here in Jalan Semarak.