THE national education loan debt structure is a ticking time-bomb that needs revamp before it explodes in the next decade, MP for PKR Akmal Nasir said today.

While debating the budget in the Dewan Rakyat today, Akmal said PTPTN’s financial burden increased by RM2-3 billion each year. 

Its commercial financing arrangement to plough in funds was not sustainable, the PKR Youth chief said.

If it is not reformed completely, he said the financial time-bomb that is the higher education fund will explode in a decade.

“PTPTN has to be reformed and replaced with a more holistic mechanism that will not burden the students and enrich private education institutions,” he said. 

He said structural reform was “not easy” but it was badly needed.

He said that while private colleges had been raking it in, they had failed to produce graduates who are ready for employment.

He approved of the government’s emphasis on TVET, but said political will was required to draft a new higher education policy. 

There was a mismatch between skills and job demand, he said, and the courses must be in line with  industry requireents 

“If the chances of a graduate securing a job in a particular field is low, advise them to take a better course,” he said. 

He also called on the government to reduce the intake of foreign labour by 5% in the next five years as the #Malaysians@work initiative announced on budget day proposed to do.

The previous administration had limited foreign labour to 15% of the total workforce, he said, which came up to around 2.4 million foreign workers. 

As of August there are 1.94 million foreign workers on a temporary employment pass in Malaysia. 

Instead of filling the limit, Akmal urged the government to instead lower the cut-off point for foreign workers to 10% of the total workforce in the next five years as there were many Malaysians who were jobless. – October 17, 2019.