With the country’s high debt pile, some are of the opinion that the government has other priorities and that university students are old enough to handle feeding themselves, including finding part-time jobs to fund their own meals if necessary.went to the University of Malaya campus, which straddles the high-cost cities of Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya, to ask several undergraduates their views.
“The ideal situation, in my opinion is to not work and focus solely on studies as that’s always priority number one,” he said. His friend and fellow course major Danish Ziyad concurred, but said it was just as hard for students to concentrate on learning when their stomachs were growling with hunger. Choong Jin Shen rejected the view that undergraduates who faced food problems were lazy or over-reliant on the government to feed them.Public Relations major Chong Jui Hia was not beyond temping as a student, but found it a challenge to fit the jobs available around her classes. Some employers, she noted, were not very flexible towards part-timers.
“People say the poorer kids are lazy and not doing what they should in order to survive, but this is a half-truth.