Joint Statement Released by Dong Zong and Jiao Zong
November 25, 2020
Formation of Government and People’s Committee to Supervise Negotiation
Continuous Appropriation for MICSS and Three Chinese-run Tertiary Institutions Urged
Apropos of the appropriation granted by the government to schools of all streams for school maintenance and promotion in Budget 2021, Dong Jiao Zong reckons it a new practice as it bases on the number of schools and is unlike the previous practice, viz., not taking the number of the streams of schools as consideration (inclusive of SMJK Chinese, SMJK Tamil, Full-boarding, government-funded religious, Catholic) but equally allocating RM50 million each in response to the common needs. Moreover, Dong Jiao Zong still believes there are problems and flaws in the MOE appropriation which begs improvement. We thus urge the government to establish a “Ministry of Education and People’s Committee” to moot on the appropriation mechanism as well as relevant supervision work.
According to the announcement made by the Senior Education Minister, in the RM800 million school appropriation, only RM620 million was allocated to 10,223 national schools and government-funded schools for maintenance and promotion purposes, that translates each of the school in this category will receive RM60,648. The appropriation capping is acquired based on the average of 90 percent of the appropriation for each school times 1,930 government-funded schools. That evidently shows inequality in terms of appropriation between government-funded and national schools. Dong Jiao Zong opines national or government-funded schools are administered by the government, thus the appropriation allocated needs to be fair. As such, we think there is still ample room for improvement in the school appropriation mechanism, and regulation should be in place to ensure more efficient and transparent pronouncement of appropriation on fixed dates which takes school population into account so that medium and big-scale schools can receive extra appropriation.
Other than appropriation for school maintenance and promotion, the government needs to reveal the appropriation for school construction and relocation as well as appropriation for water, electric and waste discharge. The government is expected to provide sufficient appropriation and school land to ensure the construction and relocation of “10+6” vernacular Chinese primary schools construction project approved by the previous government for earlier school opening. In the meantime, the government needs to refer to the treatment practicing upon national schools by directly settle all government-funded school water, electric and waste discharge bills and not simply sponsors each government-funded school with a not-higher than RM5,000 monthly allowance, leaving them to settle the rest of the bills on their own account. We think this is unjust and irrational towards government-funded schools.
In Budget 2019 and 2020, the government had for two consecutive years appropriated all independent Chinese secondary schools and three Chinese community-run tertiary institutions. However, Dong Jiao Zong regrets and is greatly disappointed towards the unclear stance of the current government whether to appropriate the above institutions continuously. Dong Jiao Zong posits, all the independent Chinese secondary schools and the three privately-run tertiary institutions (New Era University College, Southern University College and Han Chiang University College) are not-for-profit education institutions and they are nurturing polymaths for the advancement of the country, thus Dong Jiao Zong urges the government to keep this social-benefitting policy by providing them appropriation continuously.