Perkasa President Ibrahim Ali said the excuse was not acceptable as Chinese graduates were employed in the private sector despite not being able to speak and write English well.
“They seem to be biased against Bumiputera graduates from public universities. The Chinese companies prefer to take Chinese. It is all about colour in Malaysia,” he told FMT.
He said race issues in Malaysia were getting from bad to worse and it was affecting local graduates. “The Bumiputera graduates have no choice but to be employed by the Government.”
Ibrahim was commenting on an observation of former Universiti Malaya Vice-Chancellor Ghauth Jasmon that the number of unemployed people graduating from local universities was set to rise further. Ghauth had added that 80% of the 400,000 unemployed graduates today were Bumiputera. This, he said, was largely due to their poor command of the English language.
Ibrahim however said he was sceptical about Bumiputra graduates having a poor command of English because Universiti Teknologi Mara’s (UiTM) medium of instruction was English and students at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia spoke good English.
“Try speaking to UKM and USM students. They speak good English. How different are they from private college students?” he asked.
He claimed the Chinese seemed to cooperate with the Chinese in business, not giving the Malays a chance to do business, such as in the construction sector.
“Chinese contractors offer up to six months credit terms to their own but only accept cash from the Malays. The Malay contractors have no choice but to seek government help for cash or get bank loans. They have to pay interest. Due to that a lot of them go bust,” said Ibrahim.
He said it was hard to a find solution to the problem as long as the private sector continued to be biased against Bumiputera graduates from public universities.
However, the Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming of the DAP said many GLCs and multi-national companies in the private sector hired graduates with a good command of Malay and English. “These jobs pay above the market salary. They do not see whether you are a Malay, Chinese or Indian. They want people with skills.”
He said they employed graduates fluent in these two languages and with skills that were required by the corporations.