Joint Statement Released by Dong Zong and Jiao Zong
September 26, 2023
Detailed Listings of Budget 2024 Expected—Enhancement of Appropriation Mechanism and Transparency
Budget 2024 will be published on this 13th of October. The federal government is urged to forward a long-term education appropriation planning in bid to ensure fair treatment towards all streams of schools. Dong Jiao Zong believes, detailed categorisation of appropriation in national Budget, including the systematisation and transparency of appropriation exhibits good governance.
First and foremost, Budget 2024 needs to be fair and reasonable in appropriation thus providing just treatment to all educational institutions and the establishment of three special appropriations, namely, school promotion and maintenance appropriation, school expansion and reconstruction appropriation as well as additional school construction and relocation appropriation. These appropriations need to be open for all national and government-aided schools nationwide to apply consistent with their individual needs. To this end, the government is urged to set up a committee formed by MOE members and private sectors to moot for a comprehensive school appropriation mechanism, let alone supervising its execution. It is proposed, the following items to be included in the mechanism: projects and appropriation application, release of appropriation, use of appropriation, submission of appropriation, inspection and audit of appropriation, not to mention the issuance of relevant general order, guidelines and procedure management documents.
Moreover, we also ask the government to itemise the appropriations in detail for public supervision to avoid incident like inconsistence between written release and genuine release in vernacular Chinese primary schools previously. We are convinced, detailed categorisation of appropriation can ensure the full sum to reach beneficiaries’ hand. In the circumstance where appropriation cannot be released on time, reasons and remedial measures need to be forwarded. Therefore, the government is recommended to form an individual education supervision committee to consolidate the inspection of education operation to evince good implementation.
RM900 million was appropriated for the purpose of school maintenance to national primary school as well as vernacular Chinese and Tamil schools among others in Budget 2023. This June, the Prime Minister cum Minister of Finance Anmar bin Ibrahim had pronounced RM1.4 billion for the same purpose. Indeed, the MOE had in July announced all schools nationwide would get a RM70,000 appropriation each for the purpose of washroom maintenance and promotion. Yet in its September statement, the MOE amended the announcement by stating that the appropriation was merely for national schools. This scenario again disclosed government-aided schools were neglected. We would therefore ask, did this washroom maintenance and promotion appropriation come from the RM55.2 billion released by Budget 2023, or elsewhere? Since the current condition of all washrooms around the country varies, is it compulsory for all schools to make use of this appropriation? The above questions are to be addressed by the MOE in succession.
Further, we highly recommend the government to make good use of figures and diagrams—in the presentation of Budget 2024—to itemise details of appropriation for a full understanding at one glance, so that unnecessary confusion can be decimated.
Prior to the release of Budget 2024, we look forward to receiving expedite response from the government; nonetheless, we are constantly expecting public voices to be heard for an up-to-date educational policy while anticipating the promotion of national education standard and international competitiveness.