The Malaysian Insight

THE plan to offer only Public Service Department (PSD)-sponsored students who graduated with first-class honours posts in the top tier of the civil service is discriminatory, said Mahasiswa Pakatan Harapan.

The joint statement issued by Na’im Brundage from PKR, Khuzairi Mazlan from Amanah and Leong Yu Sheng from DAP said it was unacceptable for the government to experiment on the matter as performance among first-class and second-class graduates could be assessed based on the performance of the current batch of diplomatic officers.

They urged Chief Secretary to the Government Ali Hamsa to withdraw the plan. 

“Two groups of graduates will be discriminated – second class upper and second class lower graduates – who previously had the opportunity to be administration and diplomatic officers (PTD) in the civil service,” they said.

Last week, Ali said the initiative will be introduced for the July and August intake to see how far first-class PSD-sponsored graduates could perform. 

“Previously, we took in all first-class, second-class upper and second-class lower graduates. Now, we want to see if the excellent students can perform the tasks well or not,” Ali said, adding that the government was applying the model used in a neighbouring country, where three excellent students were absorbed into the civil service and the others to the private sector. 

Mahasiswa Pakatan Harapan said the policy was also discriminatory to graduates who were not sponsored by PSD, and that the government should have widened the criteria of hiring PTD officers.

“If PTD performance can be measured by their academic achievement, can we use the same method to measure the Kedah menteri besar’s ability,” they said.

The current Kedah menteri besar is Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah, who  does not have academic qualifications. He replaced Mukhriz Mahathir in 2016 after Umno assemblymen expressed their lack of confidence.

Mukhriz’s supporters had said he was more qualified to lead the state government because he has two degrees and speaks Japanese. – February 20, 2017.