THE merger of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) and Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA) will create the synergy needed to become an international reference centre in the niche field within five years, said Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik.

“This will be achieved if restructuring is done and a larger university can be established with more professors and better facilities,” he told reporters after the Wacana Ilmu Dekad Membaca Kebangsaan programme at the Prime Minister’s Department in Putrajaya today.

Maszlee said courses at UMT and UniSZA that are supposed to be their niche and internationally referred to were not happening today, as they were too busy with other courses, besides having low graduate employability rates.

The Office of the Director-General of Higher Education had said the government had agreed in principle with the proposal to merge UMT and UniSZA. The agreement was reached at a Cabinet meeting on Sept 4.

The merger, however, received protests, including from UMT and UniSZA students. UMT, located near UniSZA, has about 11,000 students while UniSZA has 12,262 students.

Maszlee said while the UMT and UniSZA issues were under discussions at the Cabinet level, it was proposed that the two institutions be synergised as practised in Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States.

Following that, he said his ministry has set up a committee involved in the deal to engage with the stakeholders and look at the potential of the various aspects of the merger to bring the findings to the Cabinet until finally it was approved in principle.

“Initial study at the ministry level found that there would be many positive impacts from the merger. The only thing that needed to be ironed out were communication plans, structures and overlapping courses,” he said.

On a separate note, Maszlee proposed for libraries, especially at government departments, to be more children-friendly so that civil servants can take their children to their workplaces during school holidays.

He said the concept of the library today should also be enhanced by creating a café besides allowing the children to play or ‘roll on the floor’ while reading.

“The library culture is still relevant but its role needs to be further developed,” he said, adding that a ‘book reading hour’ should be made a national agenda much like the Quran Hour programme whereby the whole country reads for 30 minutes. – Bernama, September 13, 2019.