Postponement of Kedah E-Tutor saves RM18 million a year - Ahmad Bashah

The postponement of the Kedah E-Tutorial (KeT) programme can save the state government RM18 million a year, said Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah.

Ahmad Bashah said the postponement of the KeT was due to the high cost of implementation but it did not mean the state government did not give importance to education.

"However, we will discuss with the Education Department other alternatives besides the KeT. Perhaps we can work out with the Malaysian School Headmasters' Council alternatives which are cheaper," he said in a press conference held after the State Assembly sitting here today.

The Kedah government launched the cyber learning portal known as Kedah e-Tutor in April 2015 to provide free on-line tuition to 280,000 schoolchildren in the state.

The portal which was developed by the TH3 Holdings Sdn Bhd, provides easy learning and more than 4,000 high-definition videos in several languages.

On a separate issue, Ahmad Bashah said from 2013 until 2016, 22,000 affordable homes were built in Kedah through various agencies such as the Syarikat Perumahan Negara Berhad and PR1MA.

He said the demand for affordable and low-cost homes in Kedah was high as more than 60 per cent of the people of the state were in the B40 category (monthly income of below RM3000).

He said the state government also planned to amend the state housing policy to ensure more PR1MA could be built in Kedah.

"We will talk with PR1MA as this is federal planning...on the part of the state, we may be able to amend the housing policy to help make it easy for the developers to build PR1MA projects which have been approved here.

"This is because although 20,000 PRIMA projects have been approved but (there are) constraints here and there involving district or town councils...we will discuss with the housing department if there needs to be a one-stop centre to speed up the process of PR1MA houses, " he said.