“If I hadn’t gotten the Colombo Plan scholarship, I wouldn’t have completed university,” says Tan Sri Datuk Siew Nam Oh from his home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“The British colonial government came out with a bursary proposal for studying at the University of Malaya in Singapore.” While there, he covered all his expenses until the bursary was dispensed.
It was 1957, the year of Malaysia’s independence. Because Tan Sri Oh was Chinese Malaysian and not Malay, he lost his bursary due to the new government’s change in policy.
“I was stuck in Singapore with no income and no resources,” he recalls. “I thought I would have to leave if I didn’t get a scholarship. I would’ve had to give up.”
To make ends meet, he began walking to university to save the bus fare and gave haircuts to other students at his hostel for 90c each. “At that time, all the hairdressers were Indian. I was the only Chinese,” he says. “I’d get one or two cuts a day. People took pity on me and gave me a dollar and told me to keep the change.”
Despite these efforts, he was eating into his savings, as he also needed to support his family after his father’s death.
Then he saw the Colombo Plan scholarship advertised in the newspaper. “And,” he says, “it changed everything.”
While in Christchurch, Tan Sri Oh discovered many of UC’s Malaysian students weren’t receiving scholarships but were instead being funded by their families.