If you’ve attended college or university in the past, chances are you’ve applied for financial aid via the National Higher Education Corporation Fund (PTPTN) so that you can pursue your studies.
While there are certain countries that completely forgive the student loans of its citizens, Malaysia is yet to be prepared to undertake such an initiative, as revealed during a Parliamentary session.
Very hard to cancel PTPTN loans in full, says minister
This bad piece of news was broken by Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapha Sakmud, who told the Dewan Rakyat that it was difficult for the government to completely forgive PTPTN debts in full as it still needed the money to continue financing for future students.
He added that the government also needed to consider those who had already paid off their PTPTN loans.
Mustapha was responding to a question posed by Jerai MP Sabri Azit, who enquired about whether it was possible for Malaysians from poor and B40 households to have their PTPTN loan forgiven.
However, he said that the Higher Education Ministry and PTPTN are currently working with the Madani monitoring unit under the Finance Ministry to come up with a financing model that will sustain PTPTN in the long run.
Previously, it was reported that a total of 430,000 Malaysians were found to have owed PTPTN RM6 billion in loans, putting its financial position at high risk:
