TVB terminates Jacqueline Wong’s contract

Compiled by C. ARUNO, AIN NADJWA and R. ARAVINTHAN

HONG Kong actress Jacqueline Wong’s dream of making a comeback has been dashed as broadcasting company TVB terminated her contract recently, China Press reported.

Photos of the 31-year-old kissing married singer Andy Hui at the back of a taxi were plastered all over the press in April last year.

According to a source close to the company, TVB had planned for Wong to make a comeback on the small screen once the scandal died down.

Several meetings among top executives were held to decide an opportune time for her return, the source said.

However, Wong’s image as a homewrecker raged on, forcing the company to end her contract prematurely.

It was earlier reported that Wong took a hiatus from acting after she was caught cheating on ex-boyfriend Kenneth Ma. Ma is also an actor with TVB.

Wong’s roles in on-going TVB dramas were replaced by colleague Roxanne Tong, who started dating Ma in April this year.

> The daily also reported that educationist group Dong Zong had urged the government to allocate at least RM20mil for 63 Independent Chinese schools in Budget 2021, the same amount received this year.

The group said in a statement that although RM800mil is said to have been set aside for vernacular schools, there was no mention of Independent Chinese schools.

“Under the country’s education system, Independent Chinese schools aren’t categorised as a government school or government-aided school.

“Therefore, we hope the Finance Minister would state explicitly how much funds will each school stream be receiving, ” it said.

Dong Zong added that a similar situation took place in 2016 where only the aggregated figure was announced, which later caused confusion as to the amount each school stream was to receive.

It urged the government to make it clear how the RM800mil would be distributed.

Dong Zong, known also as the United Chinese School Committees Association, determines the syllabus for the United Examination Certificate which is taken by students in the 63 Independent Chinese schools nationwide.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.