Perak gives RM500,000 for AIMST campus

Star: IPOH: The Perak state government will give RM500,000 to start the construction of the branch campus of the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology at Tronoh, 35km from here.
Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Tajol Rosli Ghazali said locating the AIMST campus here would be in line with promoting Perak as a hub for quality higher education in the region.
The Universiti Teknologi Petronas is also sited at Tronoh. The others are Universiti Teknologi Mara in Bandar Seri Iskandar, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman in Kampar and Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris in Tanjung Malim.
“We want to attract local and foreign students to study here,” he said at the AIMST fund-raising dinner here on Friday.
“By 2010, we expect 100,000 students to enrol and up to 200,000 to study in Perak by 2020.”
Perak MIC chairman Datuk G. Rajoo said the dinner raised RM1.5mil, bringing the total raised in Perak to RM10.3mil.
“We will start raising funds for the Perak branch campus after the launch of the university,” he said.
The MIC-owned AIMST offers science and technology-based courses such as surgery, dental surgery, pharmacy and biotechnology.