The Malaysian Education Ministry has assured that 1,500 Indian students will be taken in to fulfill the matriculation seats quota as promised earlier.
Just after the Indian community had expressed displeasure on only 892 Indian students being offered matriculation seats out of the 6,000 applied, the education department has announced that all the 1,500 seats allotted for the minority will be filled up.
The decision was announced during a meeting of the education department officials and non-government Indian organsations, which had stated their demands.
"The department has also agreed to look into the list of 333 students which had just been submitted and they promised to update the NGOs on the matter next week," said Malaysian Indian Education Awareness and Welfare Association (PKP-KIM) president A. Thiruvengadam, reported The Malaysian Insider.
However, Thiruvengadam also expressed disappointment with Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) for their lack of initiative in the matter. He informed that the MIC hadn't even bothered to file the lists of students' names to the education department.
"This is an embarrassing moment for the Indian community. We had submitted three sets of lists to the MIC, Health Minister Dr S. Subramaniam and Deputy Education Minister P. Kamalanathan, yet they did not bother to give the lists to the department," he said. "This shows they are not sincere or interested in solving out problems."
MIC President Datuk Seri G. Palanivel had earlier expressed concern regarding the government's decision to enroll only 892 students as against the quota of 1500 students' enrollment as promised earlier. "If those offered with the courses had rejected them, then the places should be offered to other students," he said.
According to him, a total of 6,150 students had applied for the matriculation programmes for the year 2013-14.
