The Malaysian education ministry has awarded contracts for the building of two polytechnics, each to provide places for 3,500 students on vocational courses.

Shah Alam Polytechnic will be built at a cost of M$134 million (Pounds 34.3 million) and Serderang Prai Polytechnic at a cost of an estimated M$142 million (Pounds 36.4 million), to bring the total of polytechnics in the country to nine.

Courses offered at the new institutions will range from timber-based technologies to plant and textile engineering.

Sulaiman Daud, education minister, said he would be requiring monthly reports from the ministry's secretary-general on progress.

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Keeping to schedules was crucial because of planned student intakes and labour power planning to meet national needs.

Work on both sites has already begun. Shah Alam should be completed by December 1996, and Serderang Prai by March 1998.

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Dr Sulaiman said that the Universiti Technologi Malaysia (UTM) and a consortium of ten United States universities, including Ohio and Minnesota, would train lecturers for the polytechnics. Batu Pahat Polytechnic will also train 5,000 lecturers by the year 2000.