PUTRAJAYA: There are indeed cases of PerantiSiswa tablets being sold and that stern action would be taken against individuals involved in selling the device they received under the Keluarga Malaysia PerantiSiswa Programme, says Tan Sri Annuar Musa.
The Communications and Multimedia Minister said 14 cases of the tablets being sold had been reported nationwide so far and the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry is closely monitoring developments.
"Action will be taken against students who sell their PerantiSiswa tablets, such as by putting their names on display at the PerantiSiswa portal and notifying their universities of their activities," he said after chairing the meeting of the Special Task Force on Jihad Against Inflation here on Tuesday (Oct 25).
The Keluarga Malaysia PerantiSiswa Programme is the ministry's initiative to help students and undergraduates from B40 households.
Reports of students selling their PerantiSiswa tablets, namely the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 LTE, at lower than market prices went viral on social media on Monday (Oct 24).
Annuar said selling the device was indeed irresponsible and could be likened to breaching pledge they signed when they received the tablets.
Annuar said the tablets given under the programme had specific applications which made it possible for them to be tracked down.
"The application enables the device to track its owner to know whether it has been sold. So far, several of the PerantiSiswa tablets have been blocked from use," he said.
Annuar said the ministry was also looking into the possibility to implement a buy-back policy for recipients to sell their tablets back to the government if they no longer require them.
"I will look into it rather than having them sell the device at a lower price...that's not good," he said.
Meanwhile, Annuar said the ministry is committed to continuing the distribution of the tablets to the approved applicants under the programme.
"I have set a target to complete the distribution by Nov 31 as the number of cases on sale of the tablets is relatively small," he said.
As of Oct 18, a total of 474,311 applications for the PerantiSiswa tablets were received, 95,882 of which were in the first phase and 378,429 in the second phase.