On June 8, the Road Transport Department or Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan (JPJ) published the list of successful candidates for ‘Jawatan Pembantu Penguatkuasa Gred N17’.

It is alarming to note that out of 751 successful candidates, only 15 were non-bumiputeras. It constitutes less then 2% of successful candidates. Out of this, only 10 candidates or 1.3% were Indians.

Grade N17 is for support staff and it is open to applicants with SPM or equivalent qualification. Most applicants for this grade are from lower and lower-middle income group families. More often then not, they discontinue their studies after Form Five to find a suitable job to support their families.

How is the government to alleviate the socio-economic problems faced by the Indian community if they offer such a low percentage of job opportunities to Indian youths? The unemployment rate amongst Indian youths is on the rise and unemployed youths below the age of 21 are susceptible to unhealthy activities that are detrimental to them and the society.

Whenever the issue of low percentage of Indians being accepted into government employment is raised, the standard answer is that there were an insufficient number of applicants. However, feedback from divisional level MIC Youth ;leaders is that many Indian Youths do apply for government jobs but are not called for interviews and out of those called, only a very small percentage have been successful.

The JPJ and other government departments should be transparent and publish on the Internet the name list of those that applied and also those that were successful. At present, there is no mechanism for anyone to verify the number of applicants for a particular government position and we are solely dependant on the statistics provided by the respective department.

Government departments should also drop the practice of hiring based on the percentage of applicants from each race, ie, if 80% of the applicants are Malays, 10% Chinese and 10% Indians, then the percentage of those offered employment by race will be 80:10:10.

This methodology of percentage by number of applicants is not used elsewhere by the government (eg, for PSD scholarships and matriculation intakes) and therefore should not be used here when determining government employment.

If at all the government is to set a quota for employment, then it should follow the percentage of racial composition in this country, not the percentage of applicants.

It is unhealthy for government departments to be constituted overwhelmingly by a single race in a multi-racial Malaysia. It is a hindrance towards nation-building and does not reflect our true Malaysia.

The government should issue a directive to all government departments to correct this imbalance and be proactive in ensuring more non-Malays are employed in the civil service.

The writer is an MIC central working committee member.