The cash never trickled down to the Tamil schools, claims P Waythamoorthy.
London-based Hindraf leader P Waythamoorthy demanded the Human Resources Minister substantiate his claims.
The Hindraf leader rubbished such routine annual announcements on piecemeal basis by MIC leaders as an attempt to enslave the largely Tamil-speaking Malaysian Indian community forever under Umno hegemony.
“This is an absolute lie. The cash never trickled down to the Tamil schools. I challenge Subramaniam to account how much went to which school,” Waythamoorthy said in a press statement.
Subramaniam revealed in an exclusive interview with FMT that the Barisan Nasional (BN) federal government had distributed RM235 million to various Tamil schools in the past three years.
Waythamoorthy said BN government had never resolved issues affecting Tamil schools in 54 years since the country’s independence in 1957.
If BN government was sincere and honest to help Tamil schools, he said it should first dismantle the fully-aided and capital-aided school policy.
He called on Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to classify all Tamil schools as fully-aided schools on par with all national schools to ensure equal flow of funding.
“We no longer live in the colonial era where a school needs to be classified as fully-aided or capital-aided.”
‘Furnish evidence’
Waythamoorthy has also called on Subramaniam to furnish evidence to back his claim that the government had created an estate housing scheme to assist plantation workers to purchase houses below RM60,000.
He claimed he could not locate any information on the scheme on any website, including MIC website.
Subramanian has also claimed that 9,000 have registered with the government MyDaftar programme to obtain birth certificates and identity cards.
However, Waythamoorthy remained unconvinced with the federal government efforts to eliminate the stateless status among Indians.
He alleged that some 300,000 Malaysian Indians, including fourth and fifth generations, were stateless.
He took Subramaniam to task for not finding out why only 9,000 had registered under MyDaftar drive.
He claimed that the home ministry’s registration system had made it more difficult for Indians to obtain their rightful status, compared to granting citizenships to Indonesians and Filipino Muslims.
He added they were also denied retirement benefits such as the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Socso.
He recalled former Selangor menteri besar Khir Toyo had admitted in 2007 that some 20,000 Indian children could not attend schools.
He pointed out that thousands of deserving ethnic Indian students have been denied public tertiary education and scholarships.
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