Students Are Selling Their Government-Sponsored Tablets Online & M'sians Are Not Happy
The individuals who were selling the tablets said that they no longer have any use for them.
By Jasmine Chea — 25 Oct 2022, 12:42 PM
Back in September, over 100,000 B40 students applied to the PerantiSiswa programme to receive a new branded tablet from the government
The programme aimed to help B40 students by providing them with devices so that they would have zero interruptions to their studies.
Caretaker Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob also announced that students who receive the tablet are not being loaned the device and are allowed to keep it permanently.
Students who have signed up for the programme would receive a PerantiSiswa package that contains a Samsung Galaxy Tab A8, a casing, a smart keyboard, and a stylus.
However, despite being provided with these necessities for their studies, some sponsored applicants have been caught trying to sell the device on e-commerce applications
Some Malaysians posted screenshots of the online listings to community Facebook page B40 Buat Perangai Apa Hari Ini and called the applicants out for trying to sell them
One seller said that the reason they were selling the device was because they had already purchased an iPad for themselves and had no more use for the tablet.
Another seller said that they had never used the device and planned to buy an iPad for themselves as they felt that it was more suitable for them to take notes for their classes.
Many Facebook users sounded off their displeasure in the comments section and called the sellers "ungrateful"
They said that they were "taking advantage" of government benefits and the tablet could have gone to someone who actually needed it.
"There are many others who actually need it. [The government] should vet through the backgrounds of the sponsorship applicants," one user wrote.
Another netizen said, "No integrity. The tablet was provided by Malaysian taxpayer money. Please return it so that the government can give it to a student who needs it. This kind of person needs to be blacklisted for wasting benefits."
One user responded a seller's description that they said they "needed an iPad to help them take notes", saying that the sponsored tablet is already good enough for study purposes.
Other netizens speculated that the people who were selling the tablets were not actually B40 students, but could be M40 or even T20 individuals. "These [people] are not B40. These [students'] parents are T20 and buy them iPads, so this issue isn't surprising," one netizen pointed out.
"They have an iPad! I suspect they are from the M40 group," speculated another user.
