by Lim Guan Eng

(Petaling Jaya, Tuesday): Human Resource Minister Fong Chan Onn should spend part of the RM 100 million graduate retraining programmed on teaching Mandarin to 14,000 unemployed graduates to make them more employable and marketable. So far the Human Resource Ministry has spent RM82 million on the 6 months graduate retraining programme to sharpen the skills of 14,000 unemployed graduates.

Whilst DAP welcomes the programme to match their qualifications with the expectations of employees which would upgrade their language competency, interpersonal and computer skills, including Mandarin would better equip unemployed graduates for the employment market. The question is whether Fong has the courage to do so following his support for Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s call that employers stop being biased by hiring only workers who can speak Mandarin.

DAP regrets that Najib does not understand that the employers are responding to the demands of the market-place for Chinese speaking staff and not practicing racial discrimination. There is no racial discrimination as Malays who speak Mandarin are employed just as Chinese who are not proficient in Mandarin are not hired. Najib is wrong to try to interfere in what is purely a market decision to take advantage of the growing China and Indian market. In fact the one practicing racial discrimination is Najib as he does not criticize firms that practice language discrimination by only hiring employees who are proficient in English.

DAP regrets that Fong does not dare to point to such double-standards and tell Najib that he is wrong and such restrictions on what type of employees the employers wish to hire would only affect business sentiment and drive away foreign investment. The latest cover issue on the TIME Asia magazine on June 26 should make Fong’s task of convincing Najib easier.

Titled, “GET AHEAD! LEARN MANDARIN(han yu) Why more buisnes leaders and students are tackling one of the toughest languages on earth”. The Time magazine cover said that Mandarin was rated by the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute as one of the five exceptionally difficult languages in the world( the other four being, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Cantonese). And yet many Westerners and Asians, particularly Japanese and Korean, are learning Mandarin simply for economic reasons to stay ahead.

Requiring employers to stop hiring employees to be proficient in Mandarin is no different from forcing them to lower their standards. Instead Najib should ask graduates to raise their standards and follow many Westerners by learning Mandarin to make themselves more employable or marketable.

Najib should realize that the number of unemployed university graduates are increasing every year because they lack the skills required. The number of university graduates had almost doubled from 45,000 in 2000 to 85,000 in 2005. 32% of the graduates or 27,200 had yet to secure jobs after completing their studies last year.

Instead of blaming the employers, the government should study why the graduates can not get jobs. To be competitive, the onus is not on the employers but on the graduates to make themselves appealing and in demand by employers, including the need to be proficient not only in Mandarin but also in English and other languages. Unless the government wakes up to the importance of Malaysians, including non-Chinese, to be proficient in Mandarin, we will still be sleeping when other countries take advantage of the expanding Chinese market.

(27/06/2006)