New Kerala education law irks NRIs in UAE

Middle East News

New Kerala education law irks NRIs in UAE

Dubai, July 6 (IANS) The recent bill passed by the Kerala assembly to regulate admissions and fees in private professional colleges in the state has come in for fire from the expatriate Keralite community in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to reports here, the community is irked by the provision of the new law that allows the institutions to charge up to five times the normal fee from children of non-resident Indians (NRIs).

The Kerala Professional Colleges/Institutions (Prohibition of Capitation Fee, Regulation of Admission, Fixation of Non-Exploitative Fee and Other Measures to Ensure Equity and Excellence in Professional Education) Bill, 2006, was passed June 30 after much debate.

The bill covers 70 engineering colleges and eight medical colleges in the self-financing sector in the state. These colleges have close to 10,000 seats for engineering and 800 seats in the medical colleges.

It also allows for reservation of 15 percent of the seats for NRI children.

A report in the Khaleej Times newspaper quoted members of the community as saying that the new law only reinforced the Kerala government's general antipathy for NRIs.

'The decision of the government to allow the managements of self-financing institutions to charge high fees from NRI students reflects its attitude towards the NRI community. The government thinks all NRIs are rich and it is justifiable to charge us the way it likes,' Puthoor Rahman, president of the national committee of the Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC), UAE, told the newspaper.

Punnakkan Muhammad Ali, the general secretary of the Indian Overseas Congress, said the new law was a clear example of double standards by the politicians in Kerala.

'Now the spouses of labourers who earn about 800 dirhams a month have to cough up huge tuition fees. We will collect signatures of students from all over the UAE and send them across to the government.'

'We do not have voting rights. The political parties always treat us as milch cows,' he added.

There are around 200,000 NRIs from Kerala in the Gulf countries. They send home around Rs.70 billion annually, contributing almost 22 percent of the state's gross domestic product (GDP).

Around 800,000 people of Kerala's 30-million population depend on these remittances for their living.

Latest News

Star stuff

New Kerala education law irks NRIs in UAE