It is learned that students in national primary schools are entitled to textbook loans if parents' have an income of less than RM2,000, while in national-type schools, only parents with income of lesser than RM1,000 are eligible for text book loan.

While the Education Ministry claims that this is not racial discrimination, it nonetheless is still discrimination of one type of public school against another. And sadly, it manifested along racial line! The ministry certainly knows that majority of students in national primary schools are Malay, and majority of students in national-type primary schools are non-Malays.

What is the purpose of textbook loan? Isn't it to alleviate the financial burden of lower income group? And what make our minister think that a person with an income of RM2,000 entitles more to financial assistance compare to a person with an income of RM1,000? Isn't this a joke? Is this an outcome of our teaching of Mathematics in English?

Social policies are to ease societal woes. One wonders what societal woe this policy is to address. I can only speculate that it is politically motivated to marginalise national-type primary schools. By doing this, it will only aggravate, not alleviate, among the majority of non-Malays, the sense of being callously discriminated.