SHAH ALAM, June 16 — Former education minister Maszlee Malik has again called for a bipartisan special council to address the "lost generation" of students affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, which he said has been ignored by the current administration.

Speaking at the PKR National Congress here, the Simpang Renggam MP said this move would be in line with Yang di-Pertuan Agong's decree to revive Malaysia's education system post-pandemic.

"I remember Agong's decree during the opening of last year's parliamentary session directly mentioned education, where he called the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education to be inclusive across political ideologies and expertise to rebuild the academic institutions.

"And this has to be celebrated by the ministries but sadly there is no solid effort from the ministries to save our education system," he said in his speech.

On many occasions, Maszlee had raised attention to the dangers of the "lost generation” of students, including those facing difficulty in pursuing their studies due to an array of complications throughout the pandemic.

This comes as Malaysian students lost hundreds of days of normal schooling days since the movement control order was called into effect in March 2020.

Commenting on reviving the free meals for student programme, he said only Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail had supported his proposal when she was the deputy prime minister during the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration/

Maszlee had previously said then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and former finance minister Lim Guan Eng had rejected the idea of free meals for students three years ago.