JPA Scholarships : Non-Malays Will Never Be Grateful

I'm not a racist. Demi Allah I'm not a racist.

But sometimes, I can't help but to debate on race related matters and I'm sure many Malays like me are on the same page. The fact is, it is the non-Malays who usually stir up the hornet's nest - provoking us Malays to engage in racial polemics.

The current issue which is clear cut race-based driven, is the awarding of Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam (JPA) scholarships. It is highly and intensively debated in Parliament and of course, the blogosphere. The culprit who started this is of course DAP's Parliamentary Leader, Lim Kit Siang. He questioned JPA's method and criterias when awarding the much sought after scholarships which he claims were given to undeserving candidates.

To cut a long story short, Kit Siang is accusing JPA of favouring the Malays rather than the non-Malays, or to be more specific, the Chinese. He claims for example, that a Malay student who scored 6As in the SPM exams can get a full JPA scholarship to study in the US or UK, while a Chinese student who scored 10As or 12As or 20As was sidelined, left to rot in the boondocks.

I pity the JPA actually. Although I wasn't a JPA scholar, I know that JPA is very, very meticulous in selecting its scholars. My friends who were awarded JPA scholarships back in the early 90s had to go through intense and rigourous interview sessions, grilled and baked by the panel of interviewers before they finally earned their stripes as JPA scholars. And surprise, surprise, my friends were not all Malays - it was a good mix of Malays, Chinese and Indians. At that time, they had to sign a bond with JPA - they were required to serve 10 years with the government.

And guess what? All my Malay friends are still with the government today, long after their bond expired. But my non-Malay friends - they did not even complete the bonds. They decided to buy out their bonds when they were offered better jobs with foreign companies. One of them ditched the government to join Ericsson and the Swedish company actually bought out his contract with the government.

You see? Where is the loyalty among non-Malays? Not a flicker of gratitude for the hand that fed them. Of course a sane person would leave for greener pastures but to me, when debating on this issue, that is not the point. The point is when they applied for the JPA scholarship, they pledged to serve the bond in full, they pledged to be loyal to the establishment that gave them this chance, they pledged everything, even the sun and the moon. But at the end of it, it's just sweet talk and as usual, JPA ends up as the fool. Worse, a large number (Malays included) even defaulted on the bond and poor JPA has to hunt them down for years and years, wasting more money to advertise the names of the defaulters in the newspapers and usually to no avail.

It is not just JPA's predicament but also a predicament faced by other major scholarship issuers such as MARA, Petronas, TM and TNB.

So, here's the million dollar question to Kit Siang and all those out there who are complaining and crying foul for being sidelined in their JPA scholarship applications.

ARE YOU WILLING TO SERVE THE FULL BOND WITH THE GOVERNMENT, BE IT 5 YEARS OR 10 YEARS??

CAN YOU PROMISE NOT TO DITCH THE GOVERNMENT WHEN A LUCRATIVE OFFER COMES FROM SHELL, EXXONMOBIL OR SOME SINGAPORE COMPANY??

If you can fulfill these pledges or promises, then you deserve the scholarship. If not, you can always try to apply for scholarships issued by nations friendlier to non-Malays. Singapore perhaps?