If only we had stronger social safety nets…

 Education and students' rights, Poverty  11 Responses »
Jan 042010
 

If only all that oil money had not been frittered away and had instead been used to strengthen social safety nets, many families wouldn’t be struggling today. In the course of writing the following piece for IPS, I found that a number of NGOs were working to plug the gaps in the existing social safety nets through which children and teenagers from disadvantaged families had fallen through. Unfortunately, these groups have suffered a sharp drop in donations and even volunteers. When firms began slashing overtime and reducing the number of days worked because of the economic slowdown, households suffered. Many workers had previously taken out loans, whether from banks or moneylenders, on the strength of their overtime-boosted income, and were unable to service their loans; others found their homes being foreclosed.

This Christmas, give them hope…

 Christianity, Education and students' rights, Poverty  9 Responses »
Dec 242009
 
This Christmas, give them hope...

If you are wondering how you can make the year-end extra meaningful, why not think of the Monfort Youth Centre in Malacca. The students of the Monfort Youth Centre Help the Centre give hope to the young: An artist’s impression of the proposed double-storey building – Images courtesy of Monfort Youth Centre First of all, I want to say thank you for your support this year with this blog. Some of the discussions and debates we have had here have been priceless. We have witnessed many things together in the struggle for justice and freedom – sometimes “live” as news breaks. At other times, we have been aghast at the environmental and human price some of us have paid for unsustainable development. And if we start to talk about corruption, oppression and exploitation, we could be here all day… The year end is also a time for us to reflect [Read more]

Number of unemployed graduates soars

 Economy, Education and students' rights, Workers' rights  68 Responses »
Dec 132009
 

While the uproar over the BTN continues, let’s look at what happens to some of our university students after they graduate. The following was the answer received by Selayang MP William Leong in Parliament recently: In 2004, there were 4,594 unemployed graduates of whom 163 were Chinese, 207 were Indians and 4,060 were Malays; In 2005, there were 2,413 unemployed graduates of whom 31 were Chinese, 70 were Indians and 2,186 were Malays; In 2006, there were 56,750 unemployed graduates of whom 1,110 were Chinese, 1,346 were Indians and 50,594 were Malays. In 2007, there were 56,322 unemployed graduates of whom 1,348 were Chinese, 1,401 were Indians and 49,075 were Malays. In 2008 (as of June) there were 47,910 unemployed graduates of whom 1,403 Chinese, 4,694 Indians and 41,813 were Malays. This more or less tallied with the 47,733 active graduate registrants on the Malaysian Labour Exchange in June 2008. [Read more]

“Apex” USM still in the doldrums

 Education and students' rights  11 Responses »
Oct 082009
 

Looks as if USM isn’t making much headway among the major league universities, if the THES ranking is anything to go by. Not to be obsessed with those rankings, but I can’t help wondering where the big apex (more popularly known as ah pek) budget is going to and what kind of results it is yielding. All those courses and workshops in hotels aimed at improving standards don’t seem to be filling up the academic “silos” of USM.

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