BANGI, 13 Feb 2018:
The Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry has approved a RM5 million grant to all secondary schools with cooperatives.
Making the announcement at an interaction session with 1,000 school principals in conjunction with a School Co-operatives Transformation Seminar here yesterday, Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin said the allocation is aimed at empowering the operations of co-operatives in schools – towards fostering an entrepreneurship culture among students.
The more than one-hour interactive session was hosted by celebrity entrepreneur Fizo Omar and also joined by Education Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid.
In the effort to mould schools with an entrepreneurship culture, Hamzah also announced a RM5,000 starting allocation to schools which were setting up their co-operatives starting this year – compared to only RM2,000 previously.
He said the RM5,000 allocation would be credited to the schools after the Chinese New Year celebration next week.
Based on the statistics of the Co-operatives Commission of Malaysia, there are 2,388 school co-operatives with 1.93 million registered members as of 30 June 2017.
Meanwhile, Mahdzir said the ministry is prepared to consider the recommendation of school principals who wanted co-operatives to be allowed to vie for tenders in their respective schools.
He conceded that currently not all co-operatives were allowed to vie for tenders in schools – including handling canteens – and it could be implemented if the recommendation could benefit the school institutions and students.
– Bernama