SHAH ALAM -The initiative by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to disseminate anti-corruption programmes through education in public and private higher education institutions as well as at the school level needs to be taken more seriously.
The Association of Malaysian Women's Aspirations (ASWA) chairman Wan Azliana Wan Adnan said that although there are several student associations in some educational institutions that have been established for a long time, cases involving corruption have been increasing based on the Corruption Perception Index.
"Subjects related to corruption should be included in the syllabus (syllabus) in schools up to universities.
"Previously, several educational institutions, such as the teaching college and Mara, had prepared a syllabus on corruption abuse, but the response was not encouraging," Wan Azlina said.
Last Thursday, the MACC implemented a targeted programme involving the government procurement sector on public funds or government allocations and enforcement to prevent the occurrence of corrupt practises.
MACC Community Education Division (PenMas) Director Datuk Razim Mohd Noor said the programme will be implemented to focus on cartel issues, leakage of government funds, violations of the law, and inefficiency in collecting government revenue.
In the meantime, she added that it is good if the government is serious about curbing corruption and involving the community specifically to report such activities to the MACC.
Therefore, she suggested that a new approach to dealing with the issue needs to be implemented immediately so that the agenda can be achieved.
"The step that needs to be taken is to make teachers MACC support members, and the study of previous programmes needs to be relooked at so that there is no waste of energy because programmes like this have been put on hold for a long time," she explained.