The DG said the Government had never condoned sympathy or discrimination when hiring new staff, including those at the Diplomatic and Administration level.
Here is a third response from a non-Malay in The Star, 29 Dec 2007:
ON BEHALF of the Malaysian Association of Social Workers (MASW), I wish to comment on the views expressed by the Director-General of the Public Services Department, Tan Sri Ismail Adam in “Few non-Malays applying, says PSD” (The Star, Dec 25).
He maintains “Non-Malays are just not interested in government jobs, judging by statistics?”
I think this statement is rather misleading and has to be taken in the context of what has transpired in the arena of employment in the civil service the past 30 odd years.
Where the recruitment of social work graduates is concerned, MASW has noted, firstly, that a significant number of non-social-work graduates have been accepted for social work related jobs in the Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Health.
These are the two main government departments that can offer social work based appointments.
Secondly, among these non-social work graduates, the majority are Malay candidates as evidenced in the current staffing, despite the fact that there were many non-Malay social work graduates who were very keen to, and applied for, these jobs in the 70s and 80s.
The feedback received by MASW over the years was from non-Malay social work graduates themselves as well as from their lecturers and supervisors.
Either they were told there were no vacancies upon enquiry or they were not called for interviews upon application or they were interviewed and turned down despite being highly recommended by their lecturers and supervisors.
There may have been pertinent reasons for this, as according to Tan Sri Ismail Adam, selection is “.. based on merit or academic qualifications?”
However, this situation has, rightly or wrongly, given rise to an observation that it is difficult for non-Malay graduates to enter government service.
Thirdly, among our non-Malay members, it has also been observed that even if they were recruited into government service, promotion is not easy to come by despite good performance.
There is a tendency to promote an employee based on the fact that he/she is “going to retire” rather than on competent practice. But this criterion is not applied as a standard rule for non-Malays.
Non-Malays have to be exceptionally, significantly, hard-to-ignore, competent and excellent to be considered for promotion, especially for high-level positions such as, for example, director-general.
Among the many reports from our members, one cited a case where a non-Malay staff member with professional qualifications and more than 10 years of working experience was not selected for the position of head, but was superseded by a non-social-work-trained Malay staff who was also 10 years junior in service.
Many such incidences, which we know also occur in other government departments, have discouraged non-Malays to apply for government jobs because they were concerned they would not be given the opportunity to achieve their full career potential.
This is the actual contextual background to Tan Sri Ismail Adam’s statement.
MASW is happy to know that the PSD is “..trying to reduce the gap between the races in the civil service.” as we believe that in a multi-ethnic society such as ours, the diversities should be mirrored in the public service whose primary responsibility is to serve the society.
ELSIE LEEl,
President,
Malaysian Association of Social Workers
Petaling Jaya.
JR: Does the PSD DG care to retract his statement now or does he still wants to stand by and let his nose grow longer? Anyway, I am NOT surprised NON of the Chinese whom replied mentioned about going to MCA for help.
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