Students, publishers unhappy over new BB1M guidelines

A statement issued by the ministry on Wednesday said BB1M will only be applicable for the purchase of academic books, journals and magazines effective May 1.

“I don’t agree that the voucher should be limited to academic books only. I use it to buy novels and stationeries because handouts and notes are already given by our lecturers,” said matriculation graduate Atiqah Sulaiman.

An earlier relaxation on BB1M enabling students to use 20 percent of unused vouchers to purchase goods other than books has also been withdrawn.

“For degree students, we use more handout materials rather than books,” said Hazirah Mutakin, a film theatre and animation student at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Puncak Perdana who uses her vouchers on religious books, novels and linguistic materials.

“If the ministry wants to limit it, better give the vouchers to secondary and primary school pupils because they use more academic books,” she added.

The government introduced the BB1M scheme in 2012 to ease the financial burden of students and to inculcate the reading habits among the people.

However, the ministry received complaints that there were serious misuses of the BB1M, where students reportedly used the vouchers to buy non academic goods like clothes, gadgets and spectacles.

Some recipients even exchanged the vouchers into cash from unscrupulous companies who are registered as BR1M vendors.

“The misuse of BB1M started a long time ago but didn’t get serious until 2013. The problem is because there is no enforcement on the ground. People take advantage of the system,” according to Malaysian Book Industry Chamber (MBIC) chairman Ishak Hamzah.

The exploitation, he said, happens openly during fairs and exhibitions and sometimes even on university grounds.

However, he disagrees with the ministry’s move to limit the scope of books that can be purchased using BB1M.

“We can’t agree that it has to be for academic books only. As far as we are concerned, a book is a book. How do you define if a book is of academic value or not? For example, you can’t say that a novel is of no academic value because social science students use novels for literature research.”

Meanwhile, writer Petak Daud feels that the government should look into resolving the issue at the enforcement level rather than ‘punishing’ students.

“The government should not distinguish the books according to their genre; that is not the solution. The problem is the misuse of the voucher. So we should be looking into the people who are registered as vendors to see if they are fit to be part of BB1M.”

Independent book publisher Syai Razi feels that such move by the government to limit the scope of books that can be purchased using BB1M is unfair to non-academic book publishers.

" Non-academic books like novels help to build one's character; they depict values, they form reviews and critiques on social and economy matters - these are all of academic nature to me."

Meanwhile, Dubook Press manager Asyraf Bazli said publishers are still unclear on what kind of books fall under the ‘academic’ category.

“We will continue to sell our books until we receive an official notice from the government to the publishers on what books are considered as academic, and what are not,” adding that he has received offers from students to exchange the vouchers for cash.

“We don’t do that. We’d rather have them buy our books.”

Since 2012, over RM900 million had been allocated for the BB1M scheme which has benefited more than 3.9 million students in tertiary education, matriculation and Form Six.