‘Ministry only vets own published books’

KUALA LUMPUR: The Education Ministry only has jurisdiction over books published by it, caretaker Education Senior Minister Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin said yesterday.

He was commenting on a screenshot posted online of a page from a Form Five History reference book that carried a wrong image of Tun V.T. Sambanthan.

“Firstly, I would like to explain that our checks revealed the book in question was published by a private company and not by the ministry.

“Our jurisdiction (covers) only books published by the ministry. The main focus of the ministry is to do its best to ensure books contain data and facts that have been verified,” he said after launching the Kamus Dewan Perdana yesterday.

The error in the reference book is said to have also raised the concern of Sambanthan’s daughter, Deva Kunjari Sambanthan.

On Kamus Dewan Perdana, Radzi said the latest edition of the dictionary contains over 120,000 root words and showcases the development of Malay vocabulary in a period of over a century.

“InsyaAllah, we will see the dictionary becoming the main reference for all for the Malay language. There have been certain improvements done to the dictionary, including introducing jawi words that will benefit the future generations greatly,” he added.

He said the Malay language was rapidly developing in the current digitalisation era and it is expected that many new words would be introduced in the future.

“It is important that the dictionary is digitalised to serve as a good reference not only for those in Malaysia but also the entire world.”

Kamus Dewan Perdana is the latest dictionary produced by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and is the first Malay language dictionary in the world to use data sources from the corpus database developed by DBP as well as internet data.