By Susan Loone | May 19, 11 Malaysiakini
Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has condemned the Public Services Department (JPA) for failing to provide scholarships to deserving students, a mistake being continuously repeated.
Lim said the JPA, in disbursing its scholarships recently, ‘cannot get their act together’ as they failed to differentiate between top and second highest scorers. He added that action must be taken against the “Little Napoleans” responsible for this mess up as these mistakes affected people’s lives.
“Either get new people to do the job, or get in a new DPM (Deputy Prime Minsiter, who is also the Education Minister),” Lim (left) said in Penang during a press conference after attending state agency InvestPenang’s, board meeting.
“What’s going on? It is such a simple matter but these mistakes create a lot of pain, anxiety and anguish for people,” he lamented.
The DAP national secretary-general also questioned the capability of the government to provide a first class civil service when it is prone to committing such mistakes.
For a first class civil service to exist, he added, the government must have in place “a good system, good ethics, especially in disbursing scholarships, and good team spirit”.
However, Lim said it appears as if these three important elements do not currently exist in the country’s administration.
He was quick to add that not all civil servants were problematic, as it was always a few bad apples which spoiled the reputation of others.
Mess driving away the best
“What we have instead is a complete mess, which creates anxiety, tears and drives away top students to other countries,” he said.
“These actions give a bad name to our civil service although not all civil servants are bad or made these mistakes,” he added.
Lim was referring to complaints by several students who were denied JPA awards despite scoring above 8As for their SPM exams.
Chinese language news dailies – Oriental Daily, China Press and Sin Chew Daily – have front-paged the mismatch of JPA scholarships.
Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong complained that the best scholars had been offered only scholarships in local universities.
Meanwhile, Penang may enjoy full employment status due to its RM12.2 billion investment last year, but now faces an uphill task of overcoming a shortage of skilled workers.
The state’s good investmet portfolio is expected to generate 21,000 new jobs but the administration has to deal with various challenges such as human resource and SME (small and medium enterprise) development, said Lim.
In response to these challenges, Lim added, the state has initiated several programmes like the SME Market Advisory, Resource and Training (SMART) Centre and the Career Assistance & Training (CAT) Centre to address the worker shortage problem.
“The state government is also collaborating closely with the Penang Skills Development Corporation to address the skills shortages,” he stressed.
“Penang can lead again by not being a sweatshop but also as the smartshop of the manufacturing industry in Malaysia,” he added.
Economic tapering off forecast
On a related matter, Lim announced the state’s target of RM6.1 billion for investment this year to attract high-value, high-tech investors was 50 percent less than last year’s record of RM12.2 billion.
“The Gartner September 2010 report indicates that worldwide semiconductor revenue growth is expected to decrease from 31.5 percent last year to 4.6 percent this year…this means that the growth rate will taper off,” he said.
“At the same time, there is a need to ‘digest’ (consolidate) the record investments last year so that the workers and skills shortage engendered does not overspill and damage the industry,” he added.
Lim said according to the latest Malaysian Industrial Development Authority report , the first three months of this year saw a total of RM1.8 billion approved from 20 projects for Penang.
He added that Penang accounts for 15 percent of the total investments approved for the country, while the foreign direct investment approved amounted to RM 991 million.
“This constitutes 21 percent of the total FDI approved for Malaysia. Penang is currently placed fourth in Malaysia,” he said.