KUALA LUMPUR: The Skills Development Fund Corporation (PTPK) should be recognised as a statutory body under the Ministry of Finance, similar to the National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN), said Federation of JPK Accredited Centres Malaysia (FeMAC).
Its president, P. Sailanathan said unlike PTPTN, which ensures that every applicant will get the loan, the current PTPK system was bound to quota which was only based on the availability of the funding.
“PTPK should be an independent body like PTPTN which comes directly under Ministry of Finance.
“Right now, funding to PTPK is determined by Ministry of Human Resource (MOHR) and MOHR decides what is the kind of funding to be given to PTPK. So there is a contradiction there,” he told a press conference on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) crisis yesterday.
He said the federation had also made an appeal to the Finance Ministry to allocate RM1 billion each year for TVET education in order to prosper forward.
“Currently, everyone is hailing TVET education as the way forward with plans for TVET to become a school leavers first choice.
“However, the actions of those in charge seem to say otherwise as the students currently in TVET education are not being given the same priority as those in other tertiary education institutions,” he said.
Prior to this, it was reported that more than 20,000 students from private TVET colleges may be forced to discontinue their studies due to inadequate allocations to the PTPK.
It was also reported that over the last four years, the MOHR had been consistently reducing the allocation of funds for PTPK with the total amount of funds being cut having been reduced by a staggering 60 per cent.
While the total allocation for 2018 was supposed to have been RM175 million for both public and private technical and vocational education training centres, many have yet to see any funding being released to these centres since last January. — Bernama