FlySiswa airfare subsidy raised to RM400, Anwar says

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim today announced that the rate of the FlySiswa flight ticket subsidy initiative will be increased to RM400 from RM300 per person starting Jan 1 next year.

He said the move is among the government’s efforts to ease the burden of students from or studying in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan who have to deal with relatively costly flight tickets when they want to return to their respective states.

“That is why we are providing assistance through FlySiswa and for next year we are increasing it to RM400 from RM300.

“This is our way of showing the government’s concern by easing the burden of the students involved,” he said when launching the FlySiswa Carnival and Madani Student Transportation Carnival at Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) in Shah Alam.

Also present were Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari, Transport Minister Anthony Loke and Higher Education Minister Zambry Abd Kadir.

Digital vouchers

Introduced in 2023, FlySiswa is a subsidy for the purchase of flight tickets for students of public universities, polytechnics and community colleges under the Higher Education Ministry as well as matriculation colleges and Teacher Education Institutes under the Education Ministry for domestic routes between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan.

It is implemented through the provision of shell credit, with local airlines issuing digital vouchers worth RM300 to each eligible student to be redeemed for the purpose of purchasing flight tickets for those routes.

The initiative aims to reduce the financial burden of students who want to return to their hometowns, especially those who have no means of travelling other than flying.

Elaborating, Anwar said that the effort to ease the financial burden was aimed at ensuring that the students concerned could fully focus on their respective studies.

The prime minister said that the government placed high hopes on university students to shape the future of a better country by learning to accept every discipline of knowledge and new technology for their benefit and that of the country.

Loke said that 70 percent of the 52,030 eligible students have redeemed this year’s FlySiswa vouchers and urged those who have not yet done so to immediately claim before the end of this month.

For next year, he said the ministry would immediately obtain the latest data from the Higher Education Ministry to enable students to redeem the vouchers as early as January.

“Thank you to the prime minister for providing an allocation of RM48 million for the implementation of this initiative next year which we are confident will enable the students involved to plan their journey back to their hometowns,” he said.

- Bernama

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