Nurul to ask govt for more funding for TVET

PETALING JAYA: Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) task force chairman Nurul Izzah Anwar said she will raise the issue of delays in payments to both public and private technical and vocational education training centres in the upcoming parliament sitting.
This comes after reports that more than 20,000 TVET students may be forced to discontinue their studies due to inadequate allocations to the Skills Development Fund Corp (PTPK).
The students rely on these loans from the PTPK to pay for their courses as a majority of them are from the B40 income group and have no other means to pay for their courses.
She said although there is an ongoing corruption case against the former political secretary of the Human Resources Ministry involving some RM40 million of PTPK's funds since last year, this was no excuse to freeze the disbursement of loans to deserving applicants.
"A lot of loan applications have not been approved in the past eight to twelve months due to lack of funding. It's as if they've all been cast aside even though they have intentions to have a better life," she said in a statement.
She said that 82% of the TVET students are from the B40 group and the Human Resources Ministry has to find a way to help.
She said the number of loan applications far outweigh the number of approved loans from 2012 to 2017. Out of 235,067 to 263,919 applications only 21,448 and 29,769 loans were approved which represents a 9% to 17% approval rate.
"The budget allocation for 2018 for TVET is RM225 million, but it looks like that sum is not enough with the rising number of TVET students," she said.
The Permatang Pauh MP stressed the need to increase funding for TVET loans.
"The Finance Ministry needs to prioritise TVET because it's part of the country's economic direction.
"I also promise to continue to fight for more funding in the coming October Parliamentary session which will debate the Budget for next year."