They are now handing out laptops, tablets and mobile internet packages to needy families with schoolgoing children who need them for online classes.

Many marginalised communities cannot afford such devices and have to share their parents’ smartphones or laptops to follow their online classes.

Since then, several MPs have gone out of their way to help them by using their own allocations as well as through crowdfunding.

Balik Pulau MP Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik’s fundraising initiative began last month. Close to RM68,000 has so far been collected and over 100 tablets have been bought for deserving students.

Besides tablets, he has also offered free printing for school worksheets and free math and science tuition classes online. He said those needing extra mobile internet data could get them from him as well.

“We have also selected 100 primary school students from B40 families and have pledged to provide them with a nutritional breakfast every day for a year. Our volunteers will also monitor participants’ academic progress and other assignments,” Bakhtiar said.

Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim’s “Asal Cek Mau Pi Sekolah” programme similarly helps poor families with laptops, tablets and mobile internet access, along with tuition classes and printing of homework, all for free.

Besides crowdfunding, he has also received help from badminton star Lee Chong Wei, who has donated 70 laptops towards his cause. Currently, Sim has ordered over 400 laptops and is processing applications that came through his website stevensim.com/asalcekmaupisekolah.

He also made use of the first day of Chinese New Year yesterday to hand out the free laptops to deserving families, earning him praise from netizens.

“Due to MCO, I could not visit my family or relatives. So I thought I might as well hand over laptops and tablets to these needy schoolchildren instead,” he said.

Sim said the laptops were given to those in Form Four to Form Six while others were given tablets. He said the current problem now was waiting for the stocks to arrive, as the entry-level models of these devices have run out of stock.

One of the pioneers to begin the free laptop giveaway was Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, who started the initiative in December.

He started a campaign of getting one laptop for each family and pledged to go bald if he raised RM200,000.

Syed Saddiq has given out 289 laptops to date, with RM291,631 raised from his “going bald” campaign and received donations in kind worth RM120,000 in the form of laptops (60 of them worth about RM2,000 each).

Permatang Pauh MP Nurul Izzah Anwar has pledged to hand out 50 laptops, smartphones and tablets in the first phase of her “Kita Belajar” plan.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had recently handed out 1,000 tablets for the poor in his Port Dickson constituency.

Nationally, the government has introduced the “Cerdik” free laptop scheme, with 150,000 such devices to be given to poor schoolchildren at 500 schools this month.

The project was announced as part of the 2021 budget and is a partnership between the finance and education ministries, with funding from a number of government-linked companies and government-linked investment companies.

The 13 companies involved have contributed RM150 million to the initiative.

However, this scheme has come under scrutiny by the opposition, after it was revealed that the laptops would only be on loan to the students, much like the textbooks-on-loan scheme.