The long wait for an offer after applying for a public sector job is the major reason why talented students of Indian ethnicity tend to prefer jobs in the private sector, according to a government adviser.

Datuk N Siva Subramaniam tells government news agency Bernama that despite applying for preferred jobs in the public sector, when students receive a job offer from the private sector with a higher salary, they are unlikely to go for the lower-paid public sector job.

The Chinese ethnic population has also been a focus of government efforts to increase racial diversity in the public sector, as previously reported by recruiter.co.uk. Despite making up a quarter of the country’s population, only 2.1% of the 1.12m applicants for public sector jobs last year were Chinese.

The Indian community is slightly better represented with 2.5% of workers, although this is still much lower than the proportion of the population of Indian origin, which stands at less than 10%.

Subramanian says: “We have a lot of candidates from among the Indian community, but there are also problems such as the poor command of Bahasa Melayu [Malay] and English.” 

He adds that among those Indians in the public sector, many hold lower level roles such as technicians and administrative assistants, and that “the outstanding students will not wait long for a job, with the private sector racing at the same time to get them”.