Indian M’sian issues being resolved

KUALA LUMPUR, 12 May 2009: Many thorny issues that have swayed the Indian M’sian Indian community away from the Barisan Nasional (BN) in the last general election are being addressed by the administration of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

MIC president Datuk Seri S Samy Vellu said today among the issues were the poor condition of Tamil schools and their status, the relocation of and allocation for Hindu temples and job opportunities in the civil service.

Other issues include higher intake into local public universities, share allocations, educational and business loan facilities, and more business opportunities and government contracts.

For Tamil schools, the government has agreed to convert all partially-aided schools into fully-aided schools, while a whopping RM130-million allocation has been set aside for the next two years to rebuild many of the schools, he told reporters after launching the Primary School Assessment Test (UPSR) preparatory books for Tamil schools, here.

“As for Hindu temples, we have requested the government to increase the annual allocation for temples from the present RM1 million,” he said.

Samy Vellu said the government had also introduced many business loan schemes to assist the small and medium industries run by Indian Malaysians.

He chided certain quarters who kept on harping that the government had neglected the Indians and that they were being sidelined while the other races were progressing.

“Instead of bad-mouthing the government day in, day out without realising what the government is doing, they should assist the Indians to plug in to the system made available by the government and channel their grouses to the proper authority,” he said. — Bernama