Dec 2, 2010

Reps unhappy over netbooks





By M. Hamzah Jamaludin
hamzah@nst.com.my

THE distribution of the 1Malaysia netbooks took centre stage at the state legislative assembly meeting when several assemblymen questioned the way they were distributed in Pahang.

The assemblymen expressed their dissatisfaction on the way the recipients were selected by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) with help from district education offices.

Norolazali Sulaiman (BN-Guai) claimed that the present selection process was ineffective as there were cases where a family received more than one netbook when their children were studying at different schools.

"I think we should refer to the village development and security committees which know the families who deserve the laptops."
Norolazali was interjecting when state Information Committee chairman Datuk Mohd Sharkar Shamsudin was replying to a question from Datuk Md Shohaimi Mohamed Shah (BN-Sungai Lembing).

Sharkar said under the first phase, 17,927 laptops had been distributed to students from 100 schools in Pahang. The laptops are part of the 123,000 netbooks that were distributed by the MCMC nationwide.

Mohd Zaili Besar (BN-Panching) said the selection process should be made by the school administration as they had the information on students whose parents earned below RM3,000.

Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob agreed with him, but cautioned that the school heads must be objective when selecting the recipients.

"We don't want them to choose only their cronies. There are cases where the recipient parents are actually rich people who drive a Mercedes or BMW," said Adnan.

Sharkar said he would bring the suggestions to the MCMC to ensure that the distribution of the laptops could be done more effectively in future.

He also said the laptop recipients must also join the activities held at the community broadband centres every week to learn new skills in information technology.

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