Final-year arts and social science students of Universiti Malaya have conducted a signature campaign to stop a purported soft-skills programme which is mandatory for them to attend.

Contacted today, student representative Chow Yu Hui (centre in photo) said a petition was circulated, with five demands addressed to the faculty dean and the higher education ministry.

More than 200 signatures were gathered up to this evening.

The action comes in the wake of complaints that a workshop organised by Aznita Management (M) Sdn Bhd on March 17 turned out to be nothing more than lengthy exposure to direct sales of 'Amcash', an insurance product.

In light of this, the students want:

- Cancellation of the organiser's directive that participants will have to promote the product to fellow-students on campus;

- Change of content or exemption for final-year students from the programme (introduced by the ministry from this year to equip students with entrepreneurial skills);

- Reconsider attendance as a pre-condition to graduation because every student has a different field of expertise and skills developed according to their major course of study;

- Redraft the seven skills to be mastered since entrepreneurship skills cannot be judged in the short term, while leadership skills and teamwork are better gauged via co-curricular activities than through an insurance-sales workshop; and

- Reconsider compulsory attendance in future because students should have the right to choose what workshops to attend.

"We have no obligation to help any company outside the campus to promote their products on campus," Chow said.

Representatives of the students failed to meet deputy dean Prof Siti Rohaini Kassim today to hand over the petition. The dean is abroad until next week.

Tomorrow, they will try to meet Deputy Higher Education Minister Ong Tee Kiat to submit the document.

'Meeting held'

Apart from attending the workshop, the participants are required to submit a report to the faculty - for evaluation purposes - on the process of selling the product. Those who fail to do so will be deemed to have failed the course and will not be able to graduate.

Chow claimed that faculty dean Prof Dr Mohammad Raduan Mohd Ariff had agreed with him at a meeting on March 22 that the workshop had been organised in an unstructured way and that it had distorted the concept of a soft-skills programme.

However, he said the dean also noted that the faculty has to obey the ministry's directive and had therefore advised students to submit their reports as quickly as possible.

"We are very disappointed that the faculty has spent RM11,000 on a workshop that teaches us how to promote an insurance product," Chow added.

A check today showed that one group of 10 students has set up a booth at the concourse in the faculty block to promote the product, as directed.

In a previous report, Siti Rohaini had maintained that the workshop would help hone the entrepreneurship skills of the students.

She explained that, since the faculty does not have a special course in entrepreneurship skills, it had to choose an industry in which to train the students.

Watch the two-minute video here.