Chong gestures at the press conference. With him are Yong (seated left), Dr Ting (seated right), Chang and Chiew.
KUCHING: The state government must honour its promise to help the 43 students affected by the Public Service Department’s (PSD) bursary sponsorships suspension to enable them to study on scholarship overseas.
Kota Sentosa assemblyman Chong Chieng Jen said these scholars were initially supposed to be offered overseas scholarship after the PSD, in 2014, promised them the scholarship if they scored good results in their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) and Sijil Tinggi Pelajaran Malaysia (STPM).
“They obtained good results. Most of them have straight As, A+ and A1s. There are 43 of them. They started the course in 2014, but after two years, in 2016, the government suddenly scrapped the programme.
“When the programme was scrapped, many of them have already had offer from prestigious and good universities overseas,” he told a press conference on the sidelines of the State Legislative Assembly sitting yesterday.
Chong was clarifying his question to Second Finance Minister Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh during the tabling of the Supplementary Supply (2015) Bill, 2016.
He recalled that in the wake of the PSD announcement, Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem promised that Yayasan Sarawak would assist the students.
“(However) Yayasan Sarawak did not help because it does not offer overseas scholarship or study loans. Therefore, the 43 of them, who were supposed to go overseas on scholarships, did not go. At the end of the day, they ended up in local universities.”
Chong, who is also state DAP chairman, then read out a student’s message to him expressing his disappointment with Adenan, who had publicly promised to help the students by giving order to Yayasan Sarawak.
The student said the solution offered by Yayasan Sarawak was exactly the same as PSD’s local sponsorship programme, which did not help them at all.
“In my opinion, I think more people have to know that we, the students, were never given what our chief minister promised us.”
The student also claimed that Yayasan Sarawak’s rigidity in not going all their way to help them was proven by the fact that they did not increase the maximum amount available for loans.
“I’m only wishing that more people would know of many young Sarawakians like me who got our dreams axed by PSD and axed again by the chief minister and Yayasan Sarawak’s false promise,” the student said. Chong said the message was given to him in the run-up to the last state election in April, but he decided not to expose it then because education should not be politicised.
“Therefore, Wong Soon Koh’s allegation just now of me politicising it to get political mileage is utterly untrue. I received this message at the end of April, but not a single press conference or press statement was issued to expose this undelivered promise by the chief minister in this respect.”
Chong said it was still not too late for Adenan to amend this policy and accord these students their rightful entitlements and expectations. Also present at the press conference were Violet Yong (Pending), Dr Ting Tiong Choon (Pujut), Chiew Chiu Sing (Tanjung Batu) and Irene Mary Chang (Bukit Assek).