Compiled by C.ARUNO, SALMA FAIRUS AND R.ARAVINTAN
DONG Zong chairman Datuk Tan Yew Sing urged the government to recognise the Unified Examinations Certificate (UEC) or risk losing the support of the Chinese community in the next general election, reported Sin Chew Daily.
“I am not threatening you, I’m merely saying what the people are thinking. This is not my opinion. Go and ask Chinese voters,” he told the daily.
Tan pointed out that recognising the UEC was a part of the present government’s election manifesto, but it never came to fruition despite coming into power.
He added that they will continue to fight for UEC graduates to be given the right to enter public universities by engaging with political parties from both sides of the divide.
“We cannot continue to lose our talents who graduated from independent Chinese schools to foreign countries,” he said.
Tan said recognising UEC was not an impossible task, pointing out that the Sarawak state government has managed to do it.
It was reported that students who graduated with the UEC will be eligible to enrol into Sarawak government-owned institutions of higher education under the free tertiary education scheme beginning in 2026.
Tan added that the educationist group was planning to meet the Selangor Mentri Besar to discuss the matter.
“Recognising the UEC will only benefit the nation and (recognising it) has no harm at all,” he said.
It was reported that the UEC qualification is taken by sixth-form students at Independent Chinese Schools and is considered equivalent to the Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia in many foreign universities.
However, the UEC is yet to be recognised by public universities in Malaysia, forcing its graduates who wish to further their studies to either go to private universities or study abroad in Taiwan or China.
> A woman in Yunnan, China, lifted a boom gate barrier weighing 70kg at a public parking lot just to save five yuan (RM2.90) in parking fees, reported China Press.
The incident took place in Kunming, where a red car was seen exiting the parking lot.
Just as the barrier was coming down, a woman wearing a sun hat and a long dress could be seen stopping it with her body.
Using her shoulder, the woman lifted the barrier back up and allowed a white car to exit without paying. She then boarded the vehicle before leaving.
Upon inspection, operators of the parking lot discovered that the woman had risked injuring herself to avoid paying five yuan in parking fees.
According to a lawyer, the company could take legal action against the woman as she could be deemed to have damaged private property.
(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.)
