Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming has expressed concerns that the budget cuts announced this week may seriously affect higher learning institutions.

This is in response to the largest expenditure cut on the line-up being a RM3.2 billion review of transfers and grants to statutory bodies.

Ong said RM7.4 billion was allocated for the operational expenditure of 20 public universities in the original Budget 2015, which is 44 percent of the total RM16.7 billion allocated to statutory bodies.

"It seems unlikely that our public universities will not suffer budget cuts as a result of the RM3.2 billion expenditure review. The question is, by how much?" the DAP parliamentarian asked in a statement today.

"But because of PM Najib Razak’s failure to table the breakdown of his budget revisions in Parliament, members of parliament and I suspect the affected statutory bodies, GLCs and government trust funds themselves do not know whether or not they have been affected by these expenditure reviews," Ong added.

Najib on Tuesday announced his budget revision after calls were made for the government to explain its response to the plummeting world oil prices.

The opposition further slammed the prime minister for not tabling his revisions in Parliament for debate and scrutiny.

'Cut Permata instead'

Ong said the lack of details has left the country guessing who will face the cuts.

"This is a significant expenditure review and the institutions involved need to know how much of their operational budget will be cut.

"Of interest to the public is whether and how much funding to the public universities will be affected as a result of this expenditure review," he said, adding there are over 120 statutory bodies at the federal level, at least 10 government trust funds and numerous GLCs who are being left in the dark.

Ong said should higher education budgets be cut, it would be an injustice as wastage continues in the prime minister's own department.

"It would be unfair for our public universities to suffer major budget cuts when other programmes and expenditure items such as the RM30.7 million allocated to Permata under the Prime Minister’s Department go unscathed," said the DAP parliamentarian.