Job discrimination – Malay and Chinese firms' different perspective

Education Minister Maszlee Malik ignited a firestorm when he defended the racial quota for the matriculation programme on the basis that bumiputera job applicants were subjected to discrimination as certain employers insisted that candidates be Mandarin-literate.

With opinionmakers arguing for or against this, it appears there is a gulf in perception which separates the Malay and Chinese business communities.

Malay business organisations told Malaysiakini that discrimination against the bumiputera community is common.

Their Chinese counterparts, meanwhile, stressed that Mandarin is not a requirement across the board and that Malays are often hired.

"It (discrimination) does happen. Not only discrimination against Malays who do not know Mandarin but there are also companies who only want to hire Chinese.

"There are also bumiputera working in private companies that face discrimination in terms of promotion and salary," according to Malay Economic Action Council (MTEM) CEO Ahmad Yazid Othman, whose organisation represents some 500,000 Malay businesses.

Yazid (photo) added that among the factors giving rise to such discrimination is the multi-stream schooling system.

However, the Malaysia-China Chamber of Commerce (MCCC), a business group comprising nearly 2,000 SMEs, said its members generally do not turn down applicants for not knowing Mandarin.

"We do not particularly set this threshold to prohibit hiring those not literate in Mandarin. We look at their skills. We hire when we need certain skills.

"When we need an engineer, we look for people who have such a background," said MCCC treasurer Thay Peng Hong.

Thay, who runs a construction firm, said prerequisites for English and Mandarin are only set when the job scope specifically requires communications in those languages.

Citing the example of his company's construction project with a China-based firm, Thay said two of the three supervisors he deployed were Malays, while another was a Mandarin-speaker to help with communication.

"We don't need any Mandarin speakers at the site if our partners can speak fluent English," he said, adding that 60 percent of his staff including supervisors, architects and engineers are bumiputera.

Meanwhile, Malaysia Chinese Tourism Association president Albert Tan, whose organisation represents some 800 members, said the tourism sector needed multilingual talents.

He admitted that the recruitment of Malays by Chinese Malaysian travel agencies was low – ranging between 10 percent to 30 percent – but claims that this is because Malay jobseekers prefered Malay employers.

A distraction?

Malay Businessmen and Industrialists Association Of Malaysia (Perdasama) vice-president Sohaimi Shahadan acknowledged that Chinese Malaysian companies do hire Malays but said the numbers are not significant and limited to certain sectors.

He said the Mandarin requirement is sometimes used as an excuse to reject Malay applicants.

"I think there has been plenty of research which has been presented with facts and we have also received many complaints from graduates about (gaining employment with such companies).

"It is time all stakeholders sit at the same table to find a solution in the interest of all quarters," he told Malaysiakini.

In March, the Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) released a studywhich found that Malays and Indians saw a lower chance of being called for job interviews in the private sector.

The study also claimed that Mandarin requirement was used by companies as a smokescreen to filter for Chinese candidates.

However, Instutitue of Southeast Asian Studies senior fellow Lee Hwok Aun and Economic Action Council member Muhammad Abdul Khalid – both of whom previously conducted a similar study and also found that Malays faced discrimination in the private sector – disagreed with Cent-GPS' findings.

Lee and Muhammad said there were no grounds in their own findings to deny that language requirement is genuinely job-related, pointing out that they even found some Malay companies which set Mandarin requirements.

Following Maszlee's comment, the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCIM) also conducted its own survey among its members.

ACCIM said its survey, released on May 29, found that 82 percent of its 368 respondents do not set a Mandarin requirement for employment.

Putrajaya is planning to amend the Employment Act 1955. As of March, a draft amendment bill includes protections for job seekers from discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, marital status, gender, race, religion, disability, and language.

The proposed amendment is expected to be tabled in Parliament by July at the earliest. - Mkini