Sunday, May 22, 2011

JPA havoc 2011- mismatch of JPA scholarships.

Both China Press and Sin Chew Daily continued to highlight the plight of SPM scorers who failed to secure JPA scholarships, including a female student from Sitiawan who had been given by JPA a 'phantom course' which does not exist.
Sin Chew Daily and Nanyang Siang Pau both urged the government to take action against the JPA officials who are responsible for the mismatch of JPA scholarships to stop the problem from recurring.




Guan Eng: Act against JPA ‘Little Napoleans’


By Susan Loone | May 19, 11
Malaysiakini

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has condemned the Public Services Department (JPA) for failing to provide scholarships to deserving students, a mistake being continuously repeated.
Lim said the JPA, in disbursing its scholarships recently, ‘cannot get their act together’ as they failed to differentiate between top and second highest scorers.

He added that action must be taken against the “Little Napoleans” responsible for this mess up as these mistakes affected people’s lives.
“Either get new people to do the job, or get in a new DPM (Deputy Prime Minsiter, who is also the Education Minister),” Lim (left) said in Penang during a press conference after attending state agency InvestPenang’s, board meeting.
“What’s going on? It is such a simple matter but these mistakes create a lot of pain, anxiety and anguish for people,” he lamented.
The DAP national secretary-general also questioned the capability of the government to provide a first class civil service when it is prone to committing such mistakes.
For a first class civil service to exist, he added, the government must have in place “a good system, good ethics, especially in disbursing scholarships, and good team spirit”.
However, Lim said it appears as if these three important elements do not currently exist in the country’s administration.
He was quick to add that not all civil servants were problematic, as it was always a few bad apples which spoiled the reputation of others.
Mess driving away the best
“What we have instead is a complete mess, which creates anxiety, tears and drives away top students to other countries,” he said.
“These actions give a bad name to our civil service although not all civil servants are bad or made these mistakes,” he added.
Lim was referring to complaints by several students who were denied JPA awards despite scoring above 8As for their SPM exams.
Chinese language news dailies – Oriental Daily, China Press and Sin Chew Daily – have front-paged the mismatch of JPA scholarships.
Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong complained that the best scholars had been offered only scholarships in local universities.