DAP’s doing what it always does – prodding the ruling coalition. This time, the target is MIC/MCA and the issue is civil service population.  DAP’s Sivanesan says this:

He took to task MIC president S Samy Vellu for harping on the 5.5 percent of civil service job opportunities allocated to the Indian community by the BN government.

Sivanesan claimed that of this figure, five percent is in the Tamil education system in the country which comprises 523 Tamil school headmasters, about 1,000 senior assistants and around 6,000 Indian teachers.

“This leaves about 0.5 percent of Indians working in the lower ranks of the civil service and this is not something to be proud of as the community is not represented in the top levels of the civil administration,” he said.

Sivanesan, who is Sungkai state assemblyperson, said now Samy Vellu is talking about increasing the percentage of 5.5 to 7.5 for the Indian community as promised under the 1Malaysia concept of Premier Najib Abdul Razak.

He alleges the move is only lip service for the Indian community by the BN government rather than real job opportunities.

He said BN must show to the public how they plan to restructure the civil service.

Sivanesan questioned what Samy Vellu had done for Indian civil service opportunities during his long tenure in the cabinet.

“Now he is out of office and he has come up with a new BN figure of 7.5 percent for the Indian community which has yet to be realised,” Sivanesan said.

“Does this mean more Indians will be allocated top civil jobs in the judiciary as magistrates and judges, as chancellors and deputy chancellors of government universities, heads of government departments, state-linked companies and other public subsidiaries like Felcra, Felda and Mardi?” he asked.

Sivanesan also claimed that there are no non-Malay district officers or local council presidents in all the state governments in Peninsular Malaysia.

Well, I don’t have actual figures on number of Tamil school teachers or the number of Indians in public service. I would say that logically, most Indians would be in education, nursing, medicine and police force. There are some prominent Indians in foreign ministry and one ministry chief secretary, plus another two or three directors of federal government departments. That’s about it. Never heard of any Indians as DO, head of local councils, etc.

But its logical that the number of Indians are less because the intake has been much less and not able to substitute the retiring staff nor compete with the imbalanced intake from the majority race. Since no concerted effort was taken in last 4 decades, we have the imbalance in our hands now. It can’t be removed overnight, unless government issues order than 90% of all intakes for next 5 years should comprise of non-Malays (which is like asking the sun to rise from the west). Even if such order is issued, the non-Malays will hesitate because the reality is that the civil service is overwhelmingly one-sided, and even in that side, competition is very tough. The non-Malays would think that the career development and progress path won’t be fair. Its not necessarily true, but the perception exists because the nearly the whole civil service is made of single race.

Anyway, it would be good if the civil service intake is made part of MIC’s KPI. 7.5% of Indians at ALL level of civil service, local councils, state governments, GLCs, etc. Looking at the difficulty, I doubt Samy Vellu would take this as KPI. Mesti MIC bungkus  🙂

By the way, Sivanesan should also open his report card and show what his coalition has done in Penang, Selangor, Kedah AND Kelantan. Talk is easy, action is hard. Let’s see some proof of how his coalition have managed (or is trying to manage) the population imbalance in civil service, local councils, state-linked companies etc. Don’t think just because you talk loud, people forget to question you as well! 🙂