Idris said he knew from the beginning that these were merely empty promises which the Pakatan Harapan made to win the 14th general election (GE14).
“When we heard them make that promise (on PTPTN defaulters), we knew it wasn’t possible.
“If they did it, 200,000 future students (in need of study loans) would be affected negatively by this decision.
“That is why I say that such promises are just election candies,” he said at the Parliament lobby.
Idris said as a minister who was in office for five years, he had studied the issues related to loan defaulters.
“But they (PH) were making statements as though we hadn’t done our homework. We spoke to vice-chancellors on how best to address the problem.
“We even conducted townhall sessions to gather ideas.”
Idris said during his time in office, PTPTN was driven towards giving out sustainable loans and was determined to find the best way to collect debts from loan defaulters.
“There are other issues in relation to the higher education ministry that I will expose after the 100 days of PH rule is over.
“We want to prove that we did our job when in the government,” he said.
Wan Saiful had told FMT that his staff were still grappling with shocking discoveries of mismanagement in PTPTN and RM38 billion debts that the previous government seemed “not interested” in collecting from borrowers.
“There wasn’t even an up-to-date database of borrowers, which means we can’t trace all our borrowers,” the former think tank chief, who has been appointed as special officer to Education Minister Maszlee Malik, said.
The PH coalition had promised to allow an extension period for repayment until a borrower’s salary reached at least RM4,000 a month. It has already lifted a travel ban on thousands who have defaulted.
In November last year, it was reported that a total of 410,500 borrowers owed PTPTN RM6.84 billion in loans. That included RM2.84 billion from borrowers who had never paid a single sen to PTPTN since the programme was introduced in 1997.