KUALA LUMPUR: More than 20,000 Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) private college students may have to stop their studies due to a lack of funds in the Skills Development Fund Corporation (SDFC).
The Federation of Accredited Centres Malaysia (FeMAC) said most of the students were from the Below-40 (B4) group and so had no other source of financing other than loans from SDFC.
“In the last four years, the Human Resorces Ministry has consistently shrunk the allocation to SDFC and it now stands at 60 per cent less.
“Even though the allocation this year was RM175 million for both private and public TVET, there are still many who have not received any funds for the past nine months,” the federation said in a statement.
FeMAC said a proportion of private TVET centres have had to cut operational costs by letting go lecturers.
It said private TVET centres were still able to train between 40,000 and 60,000 students a year, but the SDFC allocation would only be able to cover 11,000 students.
FeMAC said it had tried its best to resolve the situation but all attempts had proven futile.
“All the efforts of private training centres to meet with the Human Resources Ministry to clarify things have been ignored by all quarters,” the statement said.
It said this financial crisis came at a time when efforts were being made to empower TVET skills training to aid the country in achieving its national agenda of bringing about a 35 per cent skilled workforce by 2020.
“An estimated 1.5 million jobs are expected by 2020, of which 60 per cent will require TVET skills. The government has also decided that there is a need to lessen the nation’s dependency on foreign workers and this opens up even more opportunities to TVET graduates,” it said.
Meanwhile, TVET Empowerment Committee chairman Nurul Izzah Anwar admitted that there had been a delay in SDFC payments.
She gave her assurances that she would bring the matter up in the next Dewan Rakyat sitting.
Nurul Izzah said even though the graft case against the former political secretary to the Human Resources Minister involving RM40 million was still ongoing, this was not an excuse to freeze loans to those who were eligible.
“This is something that is worrying as most SDFC loan applications are not approved within eight or 12 months simply because of the lack of funds. This would seem as though we are pushing aside the rights of the students when all they want to do is build a better future for themselves and their families,” she said.
Between 2012 and 2017, the number of successful applicants number between 21,440 and 29,770, a fraction of the 235,000 to 264,000 applications received.
“The ministry needs to find a way to help more applicants,” said Nurul Izzah, adding that 82 per cent of TVET students are from the B40 group.
She said the Finance Ministry needed to prioritise TVET as this was part of the nation’s economic direction.