Abuses that ruin the dream of free education

Khalid Samad decries mismanagement, inefficiency, corruption, wastage and cronyism.

SHAH ALAM: It’s not the lack but the mismanagement of revenue that is preventing the government from providing free education for all, according to Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad.

“If you look at our revenue growth, if I’m not mistaken, it has virtually doubled in less than 10 years,” he said. “That’s because of the oil and gas, exports and income from taxation and so on.”

Khalid, speaking to FMT, was expanding on fellow opposition politician Rafizi Ramli’s statement yesterday that free education was possible if the government stopped wasting the nation’s wealth on projects like 1MDB.

Rafizi’s statement was a response to Prime Minister Najib Razak’s claim that the government would have to raise taxes dramatically if it were to provide citizens with free education.

Khalid said the trouble had always been the way the nation’s revenues were managed.

“That includes the question of efficiency as well as the question of corruption,” he said.

“To give a ballpark estimate, the government can cut its expenditure by more than 10% if it manages the nation’s resources and revenues more efficiently, more transparently and free of cronyism.”

He cited the 1MDB scandal as an example of the damage done by cronyism, alleging that it was now the chief culprit responsible for unaccounted outflow of funds.

He said the national revenue was currently estimated at RM200 billion a year and alleged that RM20 billion to RM40 billion was misappropriated.

“This is money that could have been used meaningfully for the rakyat’s interests, which include education, health and so on,” he added.

Khalid said the opposition parties had always believed that Malaysia was wealthy enough for the government to provide free education, better health service and better public amenities.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “we’ve never been able to prove this, but with the little resources that are available in Penang and in Selangor, I think the rakyat have seen that we have been able to manage better and also give back more to the rakyat although it is a very limited kind of spending because we receive only about 1% of the national budget, or even less.”