S’kan MP service centre charters two buses to send students back to UMS
SANDAKAN: The Pusat Khidmat Rakyat P186 Parliament has successfully assisted a group of 40 students recently to return to University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) campus to enable them to begin their new semester by chartering two express buses from here to Kota Kinabalu.
One of the students, Azlan, approached the Pusat Khidmat P186 last week to request for assistance in the form of transportation allowance. This was due to the fact that all long distance express bus in the state have been banned from operating since the Movement Control Order (MCO) was imposed in January this year.
As a result, they have to specially charter two buses in order to attend the new campus term.
Furthermore, due to the current Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), all buses can only operate at 50% capacity. This resulted in doubling the cost of bus ticket per passenger from the usual RM40 to RM80.
This has caused additional burden to the local students and their families.
“It will be a real tragedy if our students could not attend classes just because they could not afford the increased bus fares. Education is one of our top priority and we must do all we can to ensure that our young generation do not suffer from a lack of education opportunity as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It always saddens me when I come across cases where our students have to give up studying, and decide to work after secondary school because their families could not afford to send them to pursue further education,” said Sandakan Member of Parliament Vivian Wong.
In her statement, she urged the government to provide more assistance scheme for our students, especially those in the B40 group to prevent them from dropping out of school.
For the long term, she said that she has repeatedly argued in the Parliament that the government needs to introduce more courses at the UMS Sandakan campus, such as Marine Science, Agroforestry, Environmental Science and Technology, so that more local students can pursue their university education in Sandakan instead of having to travel to Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur for the same purpose.
“This will certainly help to reduce the burden on our local students and their families in their pursuit of education excellence,” added Vivian.