Indian students urged to apply now

The Education Ministry had allocated 580 seats for Indians in its matriculation programme for the 2012/2013 session but only 262 students have registered their interests.

KUALA LUMPUR: Indian students currently in Form Five have been urged to apply for the matriculation programme for the year 2012/2013.

MIC vice-president SK Devamany said Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has invited the Form Five students to apply for next session.

According to Devamany it is better that the students, who are scheduled to sit for SPM this year apply now and not later.

He said the ministry was offering seats in three streams of accountancy, science and technical (engineering).

“This is a good opportunity and every student should apply for the matriculation programme,” he told FMT.

He added the ministry had extended the registration period until end of October.

Those who are interested have go to http://www.moe.gov.my for further information.

When asked about the Indian students’ involvement in matriculation studies, Devamany, who is also deputy minister in the PM’s Department, said that this year the ministry had allocated 580 seats for Indian students.

But the response, he said, had been poor. Until last month there were only 262 students who registered.
“Since 2009, the government had granted more than 1,000 Indian students the opportunity to study under the matriculation programme but only some 640 accepted the offer,” he said.

Poor response

Meanwhile, he also acknowledged that for the year 2011, the Public Service Department (PSD) has awarded 245 scholarship to Indian.

“From this total,  137 scholarships were for overseas universities and 108 in local universities,” he said.
He added that the government had also awarded Indian students another 100 scholarships under the 1Malaysia Development Board.

He added that since the PSD scholarship became a buzzword, MIC had managed to sort out almost 80% of the cases received.

“MIC studied all the 181 cases received. There were three cases which failed to get scholarships and another 25 who got courses they were not interested in,” he said.

He added that MIC successfully solved 12 of 25 cases of students who wanted to switch courses.
“The balance 13 are still awaiting replies from PSD. I am confident they will get the course of their choice,” he said.

He also said that PSD had already offered scholarships for matriculation courses in public university for the 13 but they refused.

“MIC has put all it’s effort in this scholarship issue and we have already requested the PSD to reconsider the wishes of the 13 for scholarships,” he said.