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PETALING JAYA: Popular preacher Ustaz Ebit Lew has hired buses to send students stranded at their respective institutions of higher education back home after the government decided at the last minute to hold online enrollment and classes for the new semester.
On its Facebook page, Ebit said it rented buses to help students from Pendidikan Sultan Idris University (UPSI) in Tanjung Malim return to their hometowns on the east coast on Saturday (October 3).
“Many students from various universities sent me messages about their situation after learning that classes will now be taught online.
“Many of them had already shown up at their universities to register. I feel sad and I really feel sorry for all of them. They are the leaders of the future, ”he said in a post on Saturday (October 3).
So far this post has received over 212,000 reactions, 8,700 comments, and 15,000 shares.
In addition to UPSI, Ebit said it was also organizing several buses to send other students from other universities, including Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) and Universiti Tun Hussein Onn (UTHM) back to their places of origin.
Ebit also posted photos of students carrying their luggage bags to board the buses it had hired to take them home.
However, on Sunday (October 4), Ebit claimed that UPSI’s top management had contacted him to urge him to publicly apologize for offering assistance without prior management approval.
“I apologize to the senior management of UPSI, especially to the Vice Chancellor himself who called me to ask me to issue a public apology.
“I also apologize to the college students. I see you all as my own children, ”he said.
Ebit added that it has to retain 20 contracted buses until obtaining permission from the relevant authorities.
Ebit said he decided to help as he had been a student once and rarely returned to his hometown because he did not have pocket money to do so.
“I always slept in the mosque and had food from the mosque,” he said in a Facebook post on Sunday (October 4).
So far, his post has garnered more than 108,000 reactions, 19,000 comments, and 11,000 shares.
Meanwhile, UPSI’s student representative council in a statement on Sunday thanked Ebit for its initiative, but said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it had to adhere to standard operating procedure (SOP) and regulations.
“It requires the approval of the university leadership, which gets the direct approval of the Ministry of Higher Education and the National Security Council (NSC).
“This must be done because in the current Covid-19 pandemic, we do not want anything negative to happen, especially in relation to the safety of students as they make their journey home,” the council said.
On Friday (October 2), the Ministry of Higher Education urged public higher education institutions to make their enrollments and lessons for the new semester practically amid a resurgence of Covid-19 infections in the country.
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