(Petaling Jaya, Sunday): After opening the briefing on education for MCA’s elected government representatives yesterday, MCA President and Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik gave an assurance to the Chinese community that all the 1999 general election pledges for Chinese education including the building of new Chinese primary schools and relocation of Chinese primary schools will be fulfilled.
He told reporters that he hoped that all the new and relocated schools would be up before the next general election.
It is most astonishing that it has to take 15 months after the 1999 general election, and nearly two months of the nation-wide Damansara school controversy, for the MCA Ministers to remember the 1999 general election promise to build four new Chinese primary schools and relocate 13 Chinese primary schools.
It is clear that the DAP’s call for a New Deal for Mother-tongue Education in the Eighth Malaysia Plan to set targets like the building of 250 new Chinese primary schools in the next five years has acted as a rude reminder to the MCA leadership about the general election promise to build four new Chinese primary schools and relocate 13 Chinese primary schools.
In the 2000 Budget, the government had set the aim to build 371 new schools and extensions to 462 existing schools for last year alone.
If the government can build the new Chinese primary school in Tropicana, Petaling Jaya in eight months, why could’nt the government build the four new Chinese primary schools and relocate 13 Chinese primary schools it promised in the 1999 general election last year itself?
The failure of the government to fulfil its election pledge to build four new Chinese primary schools and 13 Chinese primary schools should now be regarded as a Seventh Malaysia Plan shortfall which the government must make up urgently and treated separately from the Eighth Malaysia Plan, which should incorporate a New Deal for Mother-Tongue Education with the specific target to build 250 new Chinese primary schools for the next five years.
What is most disturbing about Liong Sik’s assurance yesterday was his omission of the most important part of the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday - the “historic breakthrough for the future of Chinese education in Malaysia” that new Chinese primary schools under the Eighth Malaysia Plan would be built according to need - which is more important than the building of four new Chinese primary schools and relocation of 13 Chinese primary schools.
All the Chinese newspapers on Thursday had given front-page headline treatment to the news from an unnamed MCA Minister that at the Cabinet meeting last Wednesday, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamad had agreed that the government should build more Chinese primary schools according to need.
The next day, former Health Minister and MCA Central Education Bureau chief, Datuk Dr. Ting Chew Peh issued a statement describing Mahathir’s agreement to build more Chinese primary schools according to need as a “historic breakthrough for the future of Chinese education” in Malaysia.
But Liong Sik has nothing to say about such a “historic breakthrough for the future of Chinese education” yesterday, raising the question as to whether there had been such a “historic breakthrough” at last Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting.
Liong Sik should confirm whether the Cabinet last Wednesday had made the “historic breakthrough for the future of Chinese education” in deciding that new Chinese primary schools would built according to need under the Eighth Malaysia Plan - which means that if the need for 250 new Chinese primary schools in the next five years can be established because of the increasing demand for Chinese primary education not only among the Chinese, but also the Malay, Indian, Kadazan and Iban children, then 250 new Chinese primary schools will be built from now till 2005!
(25/2/2001)