Yayasan Sarawak scholarships, loans benefitted secondary and tertiary students in 2018
KUCHING: Yayasan Sarawak awarded various scholarships to 9,393 Sarawakian students to the tune of RM24.34 million last year.
A further 2,307 students received educational loans amounting to RM17.93 million that year.
Its director Azmi Bujang said the two programmes benefited students from secondary, certificate, to doctoral levels both at local and international universities.
“For the same period, a total of 18,976 people have benefited from the Excellence Award Scheme, Uniform Voucher Aid, High Performance Rural School (Hipers) Programme, Student Exchange Programme and Community Education,” he told New Sarawak Tribune in an interview yesterday.
He said the Sarawak government through Yayasan Sarawak had always ensured that Sarawakians enjoyed the privilege to further their education in various fields.
“Since the establishment of the foundation in 1971, its core objective is to ensure that Sarawakians from all walks of life would benefit from its various scholarships and financial aid, and one of them is to make sure those in the rural areas benefit from them,” he stressed.
He said to further ensure that rural students in Sarawak receive quality education Yayasan Sarawak strives to bring education to them.
“As we are focusing more on educating the rural population, we bring education to their hearts,” he said.
In line with the foundation entering its 48th year come this May 27, Azmi hopes that in five years’ time the foundation would be able to play a more active role in the state’s education development.
“All this while, we have been supporting students in courses related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and now technical and innovation fields,” he said.
He added Yayasan Sarawak would like to also support students in other fields such as culture, arts and language.
“However, that depends on where the foundation fits in the Sarawak government’s education policy.
“In the next five years, we see Yayasan Sarawak playing a bigger role in meeting the needs of the state for human capital, because there is a need for more (talents) in the area of digital economy, innovation, and creativity,” he stressed.
On the challenges faced by the foundation, he said: “We are aware that people expect Yayasan Sarawak to provide scholarship or loan to every student who enters a higher learning institution.
“It is a big challenge for us to meet that expectation because it depends on the revenue that we can generate.”
According to him, every year RM60 million is spent on the various education programmes in Sarawak.
“But our present approach of providing interest-free loans and performance-based loans is a good system, and the repayment rate is fair.
“In future, when we have more resources, we will do our best to provide scholarship and loans to as many students who deserve them,” he pointed out.
The various educational programmes provided by Yayasan Sarawak cover primary schools, secondary schools, institutions of higher learning and technical institutions (including the Tun Taib Scholarship), Student Exchange Programme Scholarship, and top-up for tuition fees.
There are also outreach programmes such as school uniform programme, computer assistance programme, and excellence award programme for students.
Additionally, Yayasan Sarawak also works with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) Sarawak Volunteers in providing flight subsidy scheme called Inisiatif Graduan Pulang Sarawak (i-GPS) of RM300 (two times a year) for Sarawakians students who further their studies in Sabah, Labuan and Semenanjung Malaysia.
