He said 14 cases had been reported nationwide so far and the domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry (KPDNHEP) was closely monitoring the situation.
“Action will be taken against students who sell their PerantiSiswa tablets, including displaying their names at the PerantiSiswa portal and notifying their universities,” he said after chairing the meeting of the Special Task Force on Jihad Against Inflation here today.
The Keluarga Malaysia PerantiSiswa Programme is the communications and multimedia ministry’s (K-KOMM) initiative to help students and undergraduates from B40 households.
Reports on students selling their PerantiSiswa tablets, namely Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 LTE, at a price that was lower than the market price, went viral on social media yesterday.
Annuar said the act of selling the device was indeed irresponsible and that the government viewed the matter seriously.
He said those who sold their tablets could even be in breach of the “akujanji” (pledge) they signed when they received the tablets.
“I hope this (sale) will stop soon … I’m deeply disappointed with the recipients of the tablets who had the nerve to sell the devices openly online … I don’t think it’s appropriate as they are not meant for sale,” he said.
Annuar said the tablets given under the programme had specific applications which made it possible to track the recipients, whether they were in the university or elsewhere.
“The application enables the device to track its owner so that we will know whether it has been sold. So far, several of the PerantiSiswa tablets have been blocked from use,” he said.
Annuar said K-KOMM was also looking into the possibility of implementing a buy-back policy for the recipients to sell their tablets back to the government if they were no longer required.
“For those who no longer require the tablets, maybe we can introduce a buy-back policy after a year … I will look into it, it is better than having them sell the tablets at a lower price,” he said.
Meanwhile, Annuar said K-KOMM is committed to continuing the distribution of the tablets to the approved applicants under the programme.
“I have set a target to complete the distribution by Nov 31 as the number of cases of tablets being sold is relatively small,” he said.
As at Oct 18, a total of 474,311 applications for the PerantiSiswa tablets were received, 95,882 of which were in the first phase and 378,429 in the second phase.