Parents, student groups welcome revival of RM100 book voucher
Published on: Friday, May 31, 2024
By:
FMT, Nicholas Chung
Universiti Malaya Association of New Youth president Ten Kang Yeaw said vouchers are better than discount cards because many students cannot even afford to buy books. (Photo: Envato Elements via FMT )
PETALING JAYA: Groups representing parents and university students have welcomed the reintroduction of the RM100 book voucher, this time for students from Year 4 up to tertiary education.
Political intentions aside, the Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE) said it’s more important that the books purchased are read and the culture of reading is fostered in the next generation.
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“Let’s not overthink, just take it. Pray that it will trigger the reading habit, which is severely lacking among the generation of the TikTok era. Students should even go a step further by lending and borrowing each other’s books,” PAGE chairman Noor Azimah Rahim told FMT.
Once the vouchers are distributed and used, Azimah said, it is up to parents to ensure that their children read the books.
Teachers, on the other hand, should ask students about their choice of books and get them to share a synopsis and the lessons they learned.
Universiti Malaya Association of New Youth (Umany) president Ten Kang Yeaw also supported the government’s initiative, as he believed it would develop greater interest in reading even among university students.
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Ten said the RM100 voucher would be especially welcomed by students who already have a keen interest in reading but cannot afford to buy books on their own.
“Yet if the government wants to ensure that this initiative has an impact, it has to implement this consistently, at least once a year, instead of as a one-off,” he said.
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Ten also believed that providing a RM100 book voucher was better than reviving the student discount card, as the card only meant that students still had to fork out their own money to buy the books, although at a discounted price.
“There are students who still can’t afford the books even with discounted prices. Therefore, compared with just being given discounts, the RM100 voucher would be a better choice,” he said.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced that the voucher would be reintroduced, accompanied by a list of recommended books to encourage students to spend the vouchers on “quality books”.
Book vouchers were first introduced by the Najib Razak-led Barisan Nasional government in 2016 as the 1Malaysia Book Voucher programme. However, it was only given to students in Form 6 and universities.
The programme was scrapped in 2017 and replaced with a student discount card, which came loaded with RM250. The card doubled as a debit card and allowed students to gain access to discounts on books and stationery as well as other education material.
Meanwhile, Mak Chee Kin of the Melaka Action Group for Parents in Education (Magpie) said he wanted to know who would prepare the list of recommended books and which publications would make the cut.
He also asked if the vouchers would only be able to be used at selected outlets or through certain platforms.
Mak hoped that the mechanism for the book vouchers would benefit the whole ecosystem, from students to those in the book publishing industry.
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