PAS Youth has called for disciplinary action on all university students to be suspended until laws regulating such actions are amended.

 

“This is because the PAS Youth Legal and Human Rights Department (Juham) is of the opinion that the disciplinary procedures used in all public universities now are oppressive, unfair, and cannot guarantee justice to the students,” said Juham director Noorazmir Zakaria in a statement yesterday.

 

He referred to Section 16C of the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 (UUCA) and Section 6 of the Educational Institutions (Discipline) Act 1974, which deals with disciplinary proceedings.

 

One of the issues in the current legislation, he said, is that university disciplinary committees are given wide powers to investigate, prosecute, conduct hearings, make rulings, and mete out punishment.

 

Noorazmir ( left ) said this is against the principles of natural justice, and the powers should be executed by different bodies instead of being concentrated in the same group of people to ensure a fair trial.

 

In addition, he said the students are not given the right to legal representation under either law, which is unlike disciplinary proceedings against university staff and is against the federal constitution’s guarantees of right to counsel and equality before the law.

 

“Hearings before the disciplinary committee involve a lot of legal technicalities,” he added.

 

Another issue is that while disciplinary rules spells out various offences, it does not specify the punishments for the offences and leaves it to the discretion of the disciplinary committee to choose amongst the penalties available without any guidelines, ranging from a reprimand to being expelled.

 

This has led to students being expelled from universities for their first offences that are not that serious, he said.

 

He suggested that the law should be amended such that the appropriate penalties to the offences are specified to ensure that they are proportional to the offense.