By Saiful Bahri Kamaruddin
Pix Shahiddan Saidi

BANGI, 11 May 2015 – Needy Muslim students of The National University of Malaysia (UKM) who are eligible to participate in Mobility programmes abroad may receive the obligatory Islamic religious alms, or Zakat soon.

Vice Chancellor, Prof. Datuk Dr. Noor Azlan Ghazali said, distributing the  alms to the programme is still under discussion as the university at present is giving aid to campus students for the payment of fees and other bills.

“Although the university has allocated RM1 million each year for the charity program, it is still inadequate since it involves 120 students per year of study.

“In addition, it aims to centralise financial aid as some of the students were given the opportunity to not only get Mobility program funds allocated but at the same time requested assistance from the Zakat Centre,” said Prof. Noor Azlan.

He added that, despite the subsidies under the mobility scheme, they needed additional funds to meet the remaining costs to participate in the exchange programme.

He was speaking at a presentation ceremony of  Zakat contributions from  Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad (Bank Islam) to the UKM’s Zakat Unit here today.

Also present were Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof Imran Ho Abdullah (Industry and Community Network), UKM Treasury officer, Khalijah Abu Bakar and Head, Strategic Relations and Product Management of Bank Islam, Datuk Wan Ismail Wan Yusoh.

Earlier, Wan Ismail handed over a cheque of RM50,000 to Prof. Noor Azlan as part of Bank Islam’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy.

Said Prof. Noor Azlan, the Mobility Programme is a student exchange programme abroad either through earning additional credits hours or studying for  a second bachelor’s degree. Only qualified students would be eligible to recieve the zakat contributions.

According to him the proposals for the implementation of zakat for the mobility programme is expected to be completed soon.

In the meantime, the collection of zakat for 2014 amounted to RM7 million and half of them were distributed to needy students for payments of tuition fees.

In this regard, he said, for 2015 UKM is targeting proceeds of RM8.5 million to enable the distribution to be implemented for Mobility programmes.