CHINESE and Indians Malaysians comprise 6.9% (68,542) and 4.15% (41,168), respectively, of the almost one million officers in government service, said Abd Latiff Ahmad.

“The human resource management information system also showed that 75.95% (754,040) of the officers are Malays while Bumiputera from Sabah and Sarawak are 7.38% (73,265) and 4.75% (47,116) respectively,” said the deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Special Functions) in a written reply to Parliament yesterday.

The Mersing MP said the data does not include those who are serving in the police force or armed forces.

“Of this, 8,050 Indian officers are working in Tamil schools under the Education Ministry,” Latiff said.

The deputy minister was responding to a M. Karupaiya’s (Padang Serai-PH) question on the number of Indians working in the government sector.

According to the Department of Statistics, the total population (census 2011) was 28.3 million, of which were Bumiputera (67.4%), Chinese (24.6%), Indians (7.3%) and others (0.7%).

Among Malaysian citizens, the Malays were the predominant ethnic group in Peninsular Malaysia, which constituted 63.1%.

Latiff said the government recruitment process is handled by the Public Service Commission and is based on merit and competency.

He added that there are no racial or religious quotas for the recruitment of officers in public service.

Meanwhile, only 2.5%, or 395, Indian Malaysians were accepted into government services last year.

This is out of 47,836 applications in 2020, Latiff said.

The total number of applications last year was 1,703,896.

In 2019, only 2.2%, or 375, out of 46,579 Indian applicants qualified for government service, he added.

“The overall number of Indians hired between 2016-2020 were 2,224 (2.6%) out of 86,128 applicants,” the deputy minister said.

Among the reasons given as to why the applicants could not be hired were: candidates did not meet the minimum requirement for positions (Grades 11-19), candidates did not have the right academic qualifications for Grades 29-41 and candidates failing the public service examinations. – October 26, 2021.