In the wake of news on varsity budget cuts and teaching staff lay-offs, opposition pact Pakatan Harapan has urged the government to top-up expenditures for public universities.

"We urge the government to increase allocations for public universities and create more permanent posts than contract positions, instead of cutting varsity budgets and increasing allocations for non-relevant programmes," read its statement today.

The statement, jointly issued by Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad from PKR, Zairil Khir Johari of DAP and Parti Amanah Nasional's (Amanah) Faiz Fadzil, said such measures would solve the financial woes faced by public universities.

The Harapan Youth leaders noted that the budget cuts were extremely detrimental to public universities - zeroing in on Universiti Malaya which reportedly had to let go of lecturers due to lack of funding.

Harapan Youth also noted news reports on March 6 claiming that 6,000 lecturers were let go because of funding cuts, which was later clarified by the Higher Education Ministry to be just 2,000.

"Six thousand or 2,000, it still adds to the unemployment pool of an estimated 515,200," argued Harapan Youth, at a time when Malaysians have to contend with rising living costs amidst an uncertain economy with over 37,000 laid off this year.

This will also increase the hardships faced by students who now lack quality lecturers, in addition to having to endure poor infrastructure, they argued.

Harapan Youth then condemned the government for simply blaming rising oil prices as the prime reason to cut the budget, especially for education.

"For us, the reason given cannot be accepted, as the nation's finances would have been at healthy levels if it is managed well without elements of graft. The question also remains, what happened to the revenue from the Goods and Services Tax (GST)?"