The Sarawak government is committed to having a multiracial civil service that reflects the state’s ethnic diversity, Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office Datin Fatimah Abdullah said today.
She said the state Public Service Commission was in charge of all recruitments for Sarawak’s civil service and the local authorities with a total number of 22,134 civil servants.
“We don’t want the state government to be accused of being one-sided but the problem is, not many non-Bumiputeras, especially the Chinese, are interested to apply for vacancies in the civil service,” she told reporters after the question-and-answer session at the state legislative assembly sitting in Petra Jaya, here.
Earlier, Chong Chieng Jen (DAP-Kota Sentosa) had queried on the small percentage of Chinese in the state civil service, which was not a fair representation of all the ethnic groups in Sarawak despite the Chinese comprising 39 per cent of the state’s 2.4 million population.
To a question from David Wong Kee Woan (DAP-Pelawan), Fatimah said the state government’s workforce comprised 82.7 per cent Bumiputeras, 13.61 per cent non-Bumiputeras and 3.69 per cent other races.
However, she said, statistics on the number of registered applicants by ethnicity from 2004-2011 showed that only 12,246 or 6.9 percent of the total 177,132 applicants were Chinese.
During that period, 71,251 Malay applicants were recorded followed by Iban (41,870), Bidayuh (19,387), Melanau (17,964), Orang Ulu (11,008) and others (3,406).
Fatimah said there were 14,272 officers in the various ministries and departments in the state civil service, 4,898 in the statutory bodies and 2,984 in the local authorities.
Although 74.47 per cent of these officers comprised males while 25.53 per cent were females, she said the trend was expected to change due to the higher number of girls entering universities and of female graduates in the country.
Social Development and Urbanisation Minister Tan Sri William Mawan, meanwhile, said that 28 ethnic groups were gazetted as Sarawak Bumiputera under the Interpretation Ordinance 2005, including eight sub-ethnic groups from the Kenyah and Kajang tribes.
Replying to Abu Seman Jahwie (BN-Jemoreng), he said, based on the preliminary report of the Population and Housing Census 2010, Kuching division had the biggest population with 681,901 out of 2,120,009 in the whole state.
As for the other divisions, the population figures are – Samarahan (246,782), Betong (105,635), Sri Aman (93,379), Sarikei (116,290), Sibu (293,514), Mukah (110,543), Bintulu (214,214), Kapit (114,924), Miri (358,020) and Limbang (84,807). – Bernama
