KUALA LUMPUR: The Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Huazong) has urged Chinese youths in the country to actively respond to the Royal Malaysian Police Force’s (PDRM) special recruitment drive to encourage more non-Bumiputeras to join the force as constables.
Its President, Tan Sri T.C Goh urged this while welcoming the statement by Federal Police Management director Datuk Seri Ramli Din that the PDRM decided to conduct a special two-weeks recruitment drive, starting March 18, following low non-Bumiputera participation in its recent intake.
Speaking at Bukit Aman today, Ramli also announced that in this special intake, the police have decided to relax the intake requirements where, the applicants are only required to have one credit, in any of the SPM subjects to be eligible for the constable position.
He acknowledged that among the obvious reasons many non-Bumiputera fail to qualify is because they don’t have at least two credits including for Bahasa Malaysia in their Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination.
In a response today, Goh noted that he had during a courtesy call on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador previously, proposed such measures so as to encourage more non-Bumiputeras, Chinese included, to join the police force.
An ex police officer himself, Goh acknowledged that the ratio of Chinese serving in the police force currently is rather insignificant still and more efforts are needed to boost it.
He said, while it was encouraging that some Chinese youths have joined the police force as “police bantuan”(Auxiliary Cop), on a part time basis, it was not easy for them to give up their full-time profession to serve as a full-time cop.
He continued that, if needed or invited, Huazong is more than willing to cooperate with the police to encourage more Chinese youths to join the police force.
He added that Huazong would continue to play its role as the ‘bridge’ and ‘conduit’ between the Chinese community and the police, and to disseminate relevant information on fighting crime and to maintain law and order.
Goh further acknowledged that it was more common for Chinese Malaysians to join the civil service via the education sector, as teachers, but their participation in the armed forces and the police force is still low and warrants more attention and encouragement from the government.
Official statistics revealed that, between 2004 and 2013, the police force has experienced great imbalance in its racial composition, with notable decline in the percentage of Chinese police personnel from 2.5% to 1.77%; Indian from 3.7% dropping to 3.3%; the Malay police personnel are the only race with significant increment from 78.3% previously to 81%, while the other ethnic groups too had dropped from 15.5% to 13.93%.
In 2014, the police conducted a special recruitment for Chinese police constables and received 3,000 applicants. However, only 234 recruits successfully completed the six months training to become a police.
In 2016, the police conducted a nationwide recruitment for 200 police inspectors, and there were very few Chinese among the 40,000 applicants.
The then IGP, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar even lamented over the discouraging response from Chinese youths towards the said recruitment, besides cautioning that the police force should not become a “Malay only police force”.
Goh thus hoped with relaxation of the intake requirement in this special recruitment drive, Chinese youths in the country would treat it as a great opportunity to serve the country and to actively respond to the recruitment drive.-pr/BNN
