THE tabling of Budget 2008 last year brought much excitement to the public with the promise of goodies.

Parents with school-going children were delighted with the free-textbooks-for-all scheme, no exam fees and no more school fees to worry about.

The reduction of road-tax, tax rebate for books purchased, no more road-tax for bikers and the launching of mega projects first in Johor, then the Northern region followed by the East Coast and most recently, Sabah and Sarawak have all but brought smiles of approval to ordinary folks and the captains of giant corporations.

However, there is much discontent still among some sectors of the urban middle-income population as cautioned by former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin. I for one am in the statistic.

When Budget 2008 announced that there would be an increase in allowance for JPA (Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam) scholars studying overseas, it brought much relief to a poor civil servant like me and I believe other parents in my situation must have felt the same.

For a while I thought all these deserving hopeful students no longer had to work part-time to supplement the funding of their studies.

However, I was shocked when my daughter, who is studying at North Western University, Evanston, Illinois in the US, said the allowance from the new scheme was less than that of the previous year.

Bad enough if there isn’t any increase, but why the reduction? Didn’t Budget 2008 promise higher allowance for JPA scholars? I strongly believe in our dear Prime Minister and I am sure he meant what he said.

Perhaps this is due to poor implementation on the part of our government officers in the US.

It seems these officers have underrated the high cost of living in the Evanston area where the university is located. Admission to this university is by no means easy, hence Malaysian students there should be treated fairly. After all, there are only a handful of them to take care of.

My daughter made a few distress calls home to her mother lately that the JPA allowance wasn’t enough and she could barely pay for lodging despite having to take up lowly-paid part-time jobs.

It was heart wrenching to see the mother cry as she talked to the daughter over the phone. Wouldn’t any mother cry if the daughter sobbingly relates her problems at the other end of the line?

I am really worried how much longer a young girl like her studying in a place half way round the world could cope with this problem. My daughter didn’t ask her parents for any more money for she knew they are only poor civil servants.

This is my sincere plea to JPA: please look into this matter as soon as possible!

WORRIED PARENTS,

Bukit Mertajam, Penang.

Source: The Star – January 25, 2008