Senator Ras Adiba Radzi said the initiative must be handled with care and fairness across all disability groups.
“If it means that it will open up opportunities for the disabled, I am going to support this. However, I would really like NGOs to sit with the government to see how we can ensure it strengthens us and that no one is left behind,” she told FMT.
Deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced on Thursday that the government had approved the implementation of the fitness test programme as the official screening mechanism for persons with disabilities (PwDs) seeking employment in the civil service.
Zahid said it would serve as a standard guideline to assess the fitness levels of disabled candidates in a more systematic and inclusive manner, reflecting the government’s commitment to equal opportunity and human development without discrimination.
Wong Yoon Long, a representative of the Malaysian Confederation of the Disabled (MCD), said any tests to be introduced must consider the different disability groups.
“It cannot be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ test as fitness means different things across disability categories,” he said, urging the government to engage various disability groups before implementing it.
Shia Siew Chin, president of the Malaysia Independent Living Association for the Disabled, said the proposal raised serious red flags.
She said Malaysia had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and must uphold its obligations.
“The government must ensure equal employment opportunities, remove discriminatory barriers, and provide reasonable accommodations. A universal fitness test contradicts these obligations,” she told FMT.
Shia pointed out that most civil service roles were not physically demanding, adding that the majority of civil service jobs were administrative or clerical, or focused on fields such as policy, research, customer service, accounting, law or IT.
“A fitness test has nothing to do with these skills,” she said.
She warned that such a test could send the message that physical condition, rather than skill, determined employability.
“That is discriminatory,” she said, urging the government to instead focus on job matching based on skills and to conduct fair interviews to make the process more inclusive.