{"id":2236,"date":"2008-07-26T22:08:55","date_gmt":"2008-07-26T14:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/tamil-schools\/2008\/07\/26\/samy-disagrees-on-community-support-for-tamil-schools\/"},"modified":"2008-07-26T22:09:07","modified_gmt":"2008-07-26T14:09:07","slug":"samy-disagrees-on-community-support-for-tamil-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/tamil-schools\/2008\/07\/26\/samy-disagrees-on-community-support-for-tamil-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Samy disagrees on community support for Tamil schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
MIBA president Sivakumar started the provocation by saying that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If not for private donors and wealthy businessmen from the community, Sivakumar argues, half of the 523 Tamil schools in the country would have been closed down a long time ago. He cites a recent example where a hall for a Yahya Awal Tamil school<\/a> in Johor Baru, costing RM700,000, was built with public donations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This made Samy Vellu quite unhappy<\/a> obviously.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu has challenged the claim that half the Tamil schools in the country would have closed down without the support of wealthy Indians.
He was reacting to Malaysian Indian Businessmen Association president P. Sivakumar’s claim that if not for private donations and wealthy businessmen, half of the 523 schools would have closed down a long time ago.<\/p>\n

“The subject of Tamil schools is very dear to me because I was a Tamil school student. Since I became a minister in 1979, I started studying the position of Tamil schools. In 1981, I came out with the first programmes for educational empowerment of the Indian community. I asked JKR (Public Works Department) and my officers to study schools that needed attention.”<\/p>\n

“I then approached then prime minister (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) in 1984 for RM5.5 million from the Prime Minster’s Fund. At that time there was scarce funds for partially-aided schools. He approved RM6 million and we built nine Tamil schools with the money.”<\/p>\n

Later, Samy Vellu said, he approached then finance minister Tun Daim Zainuddin for funds and received RM4.5 million to build more schools. He said MIC was committed to continuously seek funds from the prime minister, education and finance ministers to keep on building Tamil schools to provide a better standard of education for Indian children.<\/p>\n

“Recently, we secured a RM30 million grant and we have allocated RM11.3 million for building 10 schools in Selangor and 15 in the rest of the country, also costing RM11.3 million. Tenders are now being called. We have also obtained RM2 million for repairs of Tamil schools in Selangor this year while the government is building a RM1.2 million Tamil school in Kampung Lindungan on a 0.6ha site. The Education Ministry is also building 15 fully-aided Tamil schools costing RM11.5 million.”<\/p>\n

From now until the end of next year, RM43.5 million has been committed for the upgrading and construction of Tamil schools, he said.<\/p>\n

“For me, MIC is the guardian of Tamil schools and we have set up the MIED (Maju Institute of Educational Development), Yayasan Strategik Sosial to improve the lot of Indian children.”<\/p>\n

He pointed out that it was through MIC initiatives that on July 1, the Cabinet Committee on Development of the Indian Community chaired by the deputy prime minister had agreed in principle that all Tamil schools should be converted to fully-aided schools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

I calculated RM98.7 million based on the numbers mentioned by Samy Vellu. Since 1984 till 2009 (26 years). That’s about RM3.796 million per year. Number of Tamil schools is 523.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIBA president Sivakumar started the provocation by saying that: If not for private donors and wealthy businessmen from the community, Sivakumar argues, half of the 523 Tamil schools in the country would have been closed down a long time ago. He cites a recent example where a hall for a Yahya Awal Tamil school in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[19,84,82,24,278,225,104,20],"class_list":["post-2236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indian","category-tamil-schools","tag-education","tag-funds","tag-miba","tag-mic","tag-ngo","tag-politicians","tag-statistics","tag-tamil-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}