(The Malaysian Insider) - The Selangor government has already liquidated assets owned by University Selangor (Unisel) to help pay for its students’ fees despite Putrajaya’s reversing its freeze on federal loans for those studying in the state university.
The Malaysian Insider understands that the RM30 million generated by the liquidation exercise will now be used to develop the state-owned university, as Mentri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim’s administration plans to buy over the university’s hostel buildings.
Khalid’s political secretary, Faekah Husin, described the sale as part of a “development plan” that will help lessen the burden of students who currently have to pay to stay at the hostel grounds.
“The instruction to start the process of liquidation has already been given to the State Financial Officer (SFO) last Thursday after Selangor’s economic action council meeting,” she told The Malaysian Insider.
“We plan to buy back the hostel, which was built on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) privatisation arrangement... the university is now facing huge overhead costs- facilities and maintaining hostels due to the BOT.
“This will definitely impact the schools and [tuition] fees. With RM30 million, we intend to buy back the building in order to cut costs (for the university),” said Faekah.
Khalid said last week the assets were accrued following the restructuring of debts belonging to Talam Corporation.
Read more at: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/selangor-sells-unisel-assets-despite-putrajayas-ptptn-u-turn/
