By Fahri Mirza
GOMBAK, 30 August 2017: Five major students’ welfare projects were among the highlights during the 2016/2017 tenure of the IIUM’s Students’ Representative Council (SRC), a press conference was told on Tuesday (29 August). Among the major projects were the Waqf walkway, suspended meal, Welfare fund, bus tracker apps and IIUM heroes.
Waqf walkway project, which involved building a covered pathway from Mahallah Maryam to Kulliyyah of Engineering, was proposed by the SRC since 2008, and has been suspended for years due to some limitations. The project cost RM653,770 but was later revised to RM476,300. Currently, the total amount collected had reached RM58,572, where during the current tenure of 2016/2017, SRC had managed to collect RM31,072.
Suspended meal is the project initiated by SRC 2014/2015 to provide free food to those students in need. The modus operandi of this project is that donors will give money in the form of coupons. The coupons available are from RM1.00 to RM4.00. The donation can be made by giving directly to the SRC’s welfare secretariat or to the Mahallah Representative Council (MRC) of Mahallah. All students can donate or take the coupons.
Under the Welfare fund project, there are two types of financial assistances available – one shot assistance and monthly assistance. One shot assistance is for cases such as accidents, death and any form of emergency while monthly assistance is given to several needy students every month.
Students who are in need of assistance are encouraged to come forward and inform the SRC about their problem. SRC welcomes anyone who wants to give donation for this project.
Bus tracker, the apps that aims to ease students in getting a bus by tracking its location, was launched during the 160th day of SRC in office. After it was launched and used by the students, the apps apparently could not afford to support many usages at once. Currently, the IIUM advance technology is upgrading its application.
Lastly, the IIUM heroes project which was launched after a number of reports of cases such as sexual harassment and other crimes. The project that aims to improve the safety of IIUM students has come to be successful with the reduction in the number of crime cases.
The SRC told the press conference that all these five major projects are aimed to help students and to work for the betterment of IIUM. It emphasised the motto “Together, Ascending Further” in an effort to work for the betterment of students in general. ***