How can Mara sort out students’ funding problem in 2 days, asks PKR

How was it that concerns raised over Majlis Amanah Rakyat's (Mara) ability to offer educational loans to Bumiputera students could be solved in two days, PKR asked today. The party's secretary-general Rafizi Ramli said if the agency could solve the problem in such a short period after he highlighted it, it proved that the money was there but it made no decision on the matter. As such, Rafizi told Mara chairman Tan Sri Annuar Musa not to use Malay and Bumiputera students as a political tool to be peddled at certain times while ignoring their cries all the while. "I am warning Tan Sri Annuar Musa not to meddle with the future of Bumiputera students and use them as a political commodity to be hawked when all this while, their pleas have gone unheeded. "He also needs to be reminded that there are many more funding issues that need to be settled. He should not wait for a Pakatan Harapan lawmaker to bring them up," Rafizi said in a statement today. Last Wednesday, the Pandan MP asked the Mara chairman to explain all the education funding schemes offered by Mara. He also wanted Annuar to state whether students in Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL) would receive funding from the agency as earlier promised. Rafizi said Annuar should reveal the allocation given by Datuk Seri Najib Razak to Mara for education from 2009 until this year. Following this, Annuar announced two days later that RM264 million had been allocated for the Mara-owned UniKL students enrolled for the July/September intake last year. He said there was a delay to ensure deserving students obtained financial assistance. Rafizi today, however, criticised Annuar for failing to address the plight of the students which had been ignored for years. He said that based on his survey on the Mara funding problems faced by students, 468 had come forward with information and of this, 298 or 64% of the students were from UniKL. Rafizi said what was more shocking was how long the funding problem had been ongoing with 9% saying it exceeded two years. Another 62% have been facing the problem for between six months and a year. He added that of the 298 UniKL students, 30 said they stopped studying while 181 were planning to drop out if they failed to get funding sorted out by mid-2016. Annuar was appointed Mara chairman and UniKL pro-chancellor in 2013 after the 13th general election. – February 15, 2016.]]>