UNIVERSITI Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) is accused of trying to silence students who recently held a demonstration to protest a steep fee hike at one of its institutes.

Three students from the Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), said to be the protest leaders, were grilled by UTM’s security officers on Wednesday after the students held the protest outside the gates of the university last month.

One of the three students, Tan Cheng Siong told The Malaysian Insight that the university response to their protest showed it did not care to look into the problem.

The 22-year-old said the group had exhausted all avenues trying to resolve the issue of exorbitant fees.  

“This shows that UTM does not want to solve the problem at all and instead it is trying to silence and threaten students from voicing out their concerns,” Tan said.

“Although we have tried everything, this is the answer we have received. We are disappointed by what UTM did yesterday.”

On April 9, some 200 students staged a demonstration in front of the UTM KL campus against the imposition of a special fee on students enrolled for the September 2016/2017 intake and onward.

This has caused semester fees to increase by more than 400% to RM5,000.

First semester students will have to pay a RM2,771 special fee while those who are on their second semester and upwards will have to pay RM3,971.

Civil society groups Academic Freedom (Gabungan Pembebasan Akademik) and the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) observed the demonstration. 

The university has accused Tan of masterminding the demonstration but he said he was merely championing the cause of 600 MJIIT students.

“We received an informal request from the university’s security department on May 13 to give our statement. It was sent by SMS without a formal letter.”

When asked for a letter, the security department responded by saying they will arrange for a warrant.

The university then issued a formal letter on May 21 summoning the students to have their statements recorded.

The second-year Precision Mechanical Engineering student is unsure if there will be further questioning. 

The interrogators did not provide a reason for recording their statements nor did they specify the offences the students had committed. 

“They tried to threaten us verbally… to silence us on this.”

Tan said the group had resorted to picketing after all attempts to resolve the conflict through reports and petitions fell through. 

“We sent two reports, two petitions with over 800 student signatures by email and also in hard copy. I have also travelled to UTM Johor (main campus) to submit the petitions,” he said.

The Malaysian Insight is waiting for UTM to respond to a request for comment. 

MJITT vice-chancellor Dr Wahid Omar had said in January the special fee was necessary for the institute to cover its operating expenses as the institute is running on a RM4.2 million loss.

Wahid said MJIIT functioned as a self-financing model without subsidies from the government and UTM. 

“MJIIT was given full autonomy by the Education Ministry in terms of its financial management,” he had said.

“MJITT has to manage its own operations and maintenance cost.”

However, he said UTM was now paying 58% of MJIIT’s operating expenditure, as well as RM1.8 million in emoluments for 13 academic staff on contract from Japan. – May 31, 2019.