Scholarships for students among ground-led initiatives to help Palestinians: Shanmugam

SINGAPORE: Scholarships in Singapore are among the ground-up initiatives to help the Palestinian people, Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said on Thursday (Oct 9).

Mr Shanmugam was speaking to the media after meeting with three Palestinians who were offered scholarships to study at Singapore universities under the Palestinian Scholarship Initiative (PSI).

The initiative was launched in October last year by a group of Singaporeans in response to challenges faced by students due to the war.

Two are in postgraduate programmes at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore University of Social Sciences, while another is a 19-year-old undergraduate at the Singapore Institute of Management.

A fourth scholar was unable to evacuate from Gaza in time for the start of the academic year in NUS, and the school will hold the spot for the next academic year, PSI said in a press release on Wednesday.

"Many of these are ground-led initiatives. If you look at the number of things that have been happening, people on the ground in Gaza, Singaporeans helping people there," said Mr Shanmugam.

"There is this (PSI) initiative to bring students, there is the initiative to raise money as well as items, material that would be useful for people in Gaza, often delivered by our Singapore Air Force. 

"People on the ground working hard, constructively, government coming in - we’re all working together as a society. This is a very good initiative by the people who came together to bring the students."

The minister said he was approached some time ago by former minister Yaacob Ibrahim and Nanyang Technological University's Associate Professor Walid Jumblatt, for the government’s support of PSI.

“I said ‘of course’. We support a free Palestine, and they are good students. We'll be happy to have them here, and they can go back and contribute, because we all want to see a free Palestinian state, and that's going to need administrators, it's going to need people who can help run the place,” said Mr Shanmugam.

He added that he told the trio to “imbibe as much as you can, study hard and also absorb what Singapore has to offer”.

“When they go back, they have a bridge between Singapore and Palestine, and we wish them the best, and hopefully they can, when they go back, they're able to contribute back to their society in very significant ways,” he said.