(Petaling Jaya, Monday): Higher Education Minister Datuk Shafie Salleh should keep his own ministry in order first before he orders his ministry to carry urine test on all 17 public universities students starting from next month.

Such act is a violation of basic human rights of the students. Students are just normal citizens on the street whereby their rights as human are clearly written and protected by the Constitution. Conducting urine test on students are an act that tells indirectly that students are bound to be drug addicts, which will tamper their image and tarnish their integrity and dignity in the eyes of the public.

It also reflects that the government has no trust in students to become good and responsible citizens, not to mention the huge costs and human resources to be put in just to conduct urine tests on all students currently studying in all 17 public universities nation wide.

DAPSY believes that there are more that the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) can do to improve the quality of higher education in Malaysia, especially in putting its own house in order first before engaging in petty matters that would bring little effect to the improvement the quality of higher education in Malaysia.

The very first in-house matter that MOHE should look in the first place is the CSMU fiasco whereby the Shafie has to date fails to explain why his ministry issued “Letter of No Objection” to unqualified students to pursue MBBS in Crimea State Medical University, as claimed by the Ministry of Health.

The Minister also fails to come out with explanations on the bogus university issue concerning the the recognized degree issued by the bogus Irish International University (IIU).

The next issue is the termination of Prof Ramasamy’s contract by UKM in a very unfair and discriminative manner by the authority. And the most recent one will be the selling of student list which is private and confidential in nature by his own officers to private colleges. Private college operators had claimed recently that they obtained the list, which among others include all personal data of the students from Unit Pusat Univerisiti.

These are the burning issues regarding to higher education in Malaysia and instead of wasting time on petty matters which is not only unbeneficial to the improvement of higher education quality in Malaysia, Shafie should address these burning issues to restore public confidence in the reputation of his ministry to improve higher education in Malaysia.

(08/8/2005)

* DAP Socialist Youth( DAPSY) Publicity Bureau