Phoong said 50 applications for the Luyang Care Tuition programme were received, of whom 21 were found eligible for the programme, which is sponsored by his community centre with the help of public donations.

“The tuition will be conducted for five months for the Bahasa Malaysia, history, additional mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics subjects,” he said, adding that the tutors are secondary school teachers.

Phoong said a father had told him that before the pandemic his daughter attended a tuition centre which charged RM500 a month. “The pandemic affected the family’s finances severely and they had to sacrifice their daughter’s tuition to lower their expenses,” he said.

In 2019, a free tuition programme Phoong launched led to his nomination by One Young World, a global non-profit organisation, as one of the top 20 most impactful young politicians around the globe.