KUALA LUMPUR – The Malaysian Indian Transformation Unit (Mitra) may be under the Human Resource Ministry (Kesuma), but that doesn’t alter its original mandate of being an agency specifically responsible for the socio-economic development of the Indian community.
Human Resource Minister Datuk Seri R. Ramanan said that, instead, the move has strengthened the Madani government’s commitment to ensuring the agenda of welfare, social mobility and human capital development of the Indian community is implemented in a more integrated and high-impact manner.
“In this regard, the Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim) is of the view that placing Mitra under Kesuma will not affect that principle, but instead strengthen Mitra’s position by comprehensively integrating the agenda of Indian community development into the country’s human resource development,” he said during the Minister’s Question Time session in the Dewan Rakyat today.
He was replying to a question from Kalam Salan (PN-Sabak Bernam), who asked if the government could assure that placing Mitra under Kesuma wouldn’t jeopardise the interests and welfare of the Indian community, given the ministry’s existing heavy workload.
Ramanan said the move was done to ensure the planning, implementation and monitoring of Mitra programmes could be done in an organised, systematic and effective manner, in line with the policies of workforce development, employability, skills improvement and social protection under Kesuma.
At the same time, he said the measures would also strengthen governance, transparency and accountability in the management of Mitra allocations and programmes.
Programmes achieved success
Responding to a supplementary question from Kalam on allegations of a blanket failure in Mitra aid applications in the Sabak Bernam constituency in 2025, as well as issues concerning assistance for university students, Ramanan said all beneficiaries of Mitra programmes are listed on the agency’s official website.
He said that under the first-year university graduate programme, financial assistance of about RM4,000 has been disbursed in stages to eligible recipients.
For the laptop assistance programme, he said 3,000 new laptops have been supplied to students at public and private higher education institutions. The laptops were procured by Yayasan Didik Negara and are currently being distributed.
Ramanan said applications for the assistance were processed on a first come, first served basis, and that the number of applications exceeded the available supply.
“Many of the programmes implemented have already achieved an excellent status,” he said, adding that RM48.874 million has been disbursed to beneficiaries so far, with the remaining allocation still in the process of being channelled.
In response to a supplementary question from Azli Yusof (PH–Shah Alam) on the involvement of service centres and local community leaders, Ramanan said that the RM100,000 allocation in 2023 was disbursed not by parliamentary constituency but based on districts with the highest concentration of Indian residents.
He said that in 2024, Mitra implemented various other programmes, including the empowerment of places of worship, school maintenance assistance, minor repairs, aid for plantation workers, student device programmes, kindergartens, as well as public facilities and safety initiatives in Indian villages.
Accordingly, Ramanan said his ministry has given an assurance that this year, targeted additional allocation programmes will be reintroduced with the involvement of Members of Parliament and local leaders. – February 5, 2026