[ad_1]
KOTA KINABALU: Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri deleted his Facebook post criticizing college student Veveonah Mosibin and accusing her of faking her problems with online exams.
The Monday night (September 7) post alleged that the University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) student, who gained fame on social media after posting a YouTube video of her climbing a tree to get a connection to The Internet had dramatized the subject for the sake of publicity.
The publication garnered thousands of comments in a few hours, most of which called for his resignation for what was described as harassment of the young university student.
Rahim had claimed that UMS had not taken any final exams online during that time, and that it was just a “normal online conference”, saying that he obtained the information from a professor, whom he did not name.
He said that he had also instructed his officer to obtain details about Veveonah’s family background and living conditions, and found that she had been living in a city at the time, not in her village.
“So what I don’t understand here is how you can claim to live in Kg Sapatalang when they don’t even have a house there.” he said in his FB post.
When he first rose to prominence in June, Veveonah had already explained that they were living with relatives while they waited for their house to be rebuilt.
She had chosen to stay in town to help her parents on their farm, as they were not working due to the movement control order (MCO) imposed since March to combat the Covid-10 pandemic.
Rahim’s post came after Vice Minister of Communications and Multimedia Datuk Zahidi Zainul Abidin named him the previous Monday as his source for telling Dewan Negara last Friday (September 4) that Veveonah had no exams on the day in who uploaded his video in the treetop and was simply trying to get views on YouTube.
When that news broke on September 4, some students posted on social media saying they were their classmates and that they were in fact taking exams at the time in June.
This prompted Zahidi to post an apology on Facebook, saying that he had been given the wrong information and that he would clarify things with Dewan Negara on Monday.
Instead, he held a press conference outside Dewan Negara, in which he named Rahim as the source of the information.
Veveonah, for her part, has not been contacted since her last video was uploaded about a week ago.
[ad_2]
