After the government forked out RM20 million in consultancy fees for the National Education Blueprint, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad sarcastically said that he, too, can do it.

“I can also be a local expert, but no one wants to give me (the consultancy job),” he told a press conference in Subang Jaya this evening.

Mahathir was responding to a query on the government spending hefty sums of money on McKinsey & Co for consultancy services.

NONE The payment for the education blueprint come under heavy criticism from the opposition, which pointed out that the consultancy is not specialised in education matters.

Furthermore, hiring a foreign agency also appeared to have sidelined local technocrats who, under the tenure of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, have been brought on in large numbers under the banner of Pemandu.

Mahathir also weighed in on the country’s poor university rankings, saying that it may have been a result of hasty expansion of tertiary education.

“The expansion of educational institutions has been so fast that it is difficult to get educators, lecturers and professors.

“In the haste, we don’t have enough educators and some may not be up to standard,” he said.

The former prim minister was at Sunway University today to present scholarships from the the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation to deserving students.