Accessing the 9MP

Tony and I are in the process of going through the 9MP and highlighting individual sections which pertain to education. But before I fire off the first salvo, let me first say a few things about accessing the 9MP online.

First of all, accessing the BM version take a long time. Secondly, there is no shortcut or link to the English version of the 9MP at the main EPU website. One would have thought that given the international interest in the 9MP and given that many Malaysians, including parliamentarians and business leaders and ordinary citizens would prefer to read the 9MP in English, this ommission seems short sighted. Thirdly, if one were to google '9MP English' or '9MP English EPU' you won't find a direct link to the EPU website either. It's more likely that you'll be referred to one of the many press statements by YB Lim Kit Siang. I don't know much about the algorithms of the google search process, but I'm willing to bet that this is party due to the fact that none of the EPU website had the words 9MP English Version on it (it has versi Bahasa Inggeris instead) (You can download the English version here). You might think that if the EPU wanted the 9th MP to get 'out there' as it were, they would be more concious of these issues.

Fourthly, the pdf file of the 9MP sometimes cannot be saved (depending on the version of Adobe which you have) and most definitely cannot be printed (on all versions of Adobe)! I know that this is partly motivated by the fact that EPU wants people to buy physical copies of the 9MP but is this a desirable motivation given the electronic world which we live in? I think it's fine for EPU to charge for physical copies since they have to defray the costs of production of the plan, which I assume is pretty thick. But how about students and other scholars who might not want to shell out the dough to buy these physical copies? How about international observers, researchers and students who want to print and read the 9MP instead of perusing it online (when was the last time you read a book online?)

I wonder if any of our readers have found access, saving and printing the 9MP equally frustrating?

Let me just spew over this over a little while before I fire of my first salvo which is a discussion of the proposed Malaysian Qualifications Framework (MQF).