SHAH ALAM, Dec 12 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has announced that the rate of the FLYsiswa flight ticket subsidy initiative will be increased to RM400 from RM300 per person, starting January 1 next year.
The move is among the government's efforts to ease the burden of students from or studying in Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan, who are facing the issue of relatively high flight tickets when they want to return to their respective states.
"That is why we are providing assistance through FLYsiswa and for next year we are increasing it to RM400 from the current RM300.
"This is our way of showing the government's concern by easing the burden of the students involved," he said when launching the FLYsiswa Carnival and Madani Student Transportation Carnival at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) today.
Also present were Menteri Besar Dato' Seri Amirudin Shari, Transport Minister Anthony Loke, and Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abd Kadir.
Introduced last year, FLYsiswa is a subsidy for the purchase of flight tickets for students of public universities, polytechnics and community colleges under the Higher Education Ministry, as well as matriculation colleges and Teacher Education Institutes under the Education Ministry for domestic routes between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, Sarawak, and Labuan.
It is implemented through the method of providing shell credit, with local airlines issuing digital vouchers worth RM300 to each eligible student to be redeemed to purchase flight tickets for those routes.
The initiative aims to reduce the financial burden of students who want to return to their hometowns, especially those who have no choice of mode of transportation other than flying.
Elaborating, Anwar said the effort to ease the financial burden was aimed at ensuring the students concerned could fully focus on their respective studies.
The government places high hopes on the varsity students to shape the future of a better country by learning to accept every discipline of knowledge and new technology for the benefit of themselves and the country in the future.
Meanwhile, Loke said that 70 per cent of the 52,030 eligible students have redeemed this year's FLYsiswa vouchers, and urged those who have not yet done so to immediately claim before the end of this month.
For next year, the Transport Ministry will immediately obtain the latest data from the MOHE to enable students to redeem the vouchers as early as January.
"Thank you to the Prime Minister for providing an allocation of RM48 million for the implementation of this initiative next year which we are confident will enable the students involved to plan their journey back to their hometowns," he said.
On today's carnival, Loke said 4,158 students attended the carnival, among other things to obtain information related to the FLYsiswa initiative, in addition to grabbing the 3,500 free helmets made available during the event.
— Bernama
