This happened a few months ago when Medical students from Singapore were completing their final year in Medicine in Australia. Yearly the Singapore Govt thru various cluster hospitals send recruitment teams to entice Singapore student studing in OZ to return and practice medicine. The aim is 2 fold - (1) to address the shortage of medical practitioners and (2) bring young Singaporeans back home.
The team was talking to a group of final year students in an Australian city and the Prof noticed a Malay chap in the group of students. He was the only Malay chap. The prof asked him what race he was, a question he did not ask any others. He then asked him who paid for his university education. This chap replied that his father did. The Prof did not stop there but went on to ask what job the father was holding. At this stage , the chap replied what has all this got to do with the recruitment talk that he was attending. Apparently the others become very uncomfortable seeing a fellow Singaporean being treated in such an insensitive and clearly a racist manner.
The son called up the father and told him that he will never ever come back to Singapore to work breaking the heart of his mum. I was stunned when I heard the story. My feeling is that this should have been raised to Yaacob or one of the Malay MPs.
By the way, the fees for University tuition in OZ is around $50K a year. This Prof obviously was stunned that a Malay family could afford to pay such fees. The father runs his own factory.
There is a twist to this story. Since the 1980s, the Govt under various schemes such as IMAC, PIPS and SIMS all under PMO have attempted to bring in quality FTs prior to the ope gate policy that we see now . They have repeatedly failed in the Malay category. They tried in Indonesia and did not succeed. They even approached Malay professionals who migrated to OZ from Malaysia and also failed. Now here is a Singaporean Malay who turned up for recruitment and was absolutely treated like shit.
If I was Yaacob, I would tender my resignation as this is one case, they should have intervened if they were aware of it and I understand this story is making the rounds in Singapore. Lets see if this story does the job as many people were present when the inquisition took place on one fateful day in Australia. Rajaratnam must be turning in his grave together with his pledge which I am sure that chap was reciting during his school days in Singapore.
The team was talking to a group of final year students in an Australian city and the Prof noticed a Malay chap in the group of students. He was the only Malay chap. The prof asked him what race he was, a question he did not ask any others. He then asked him who paid for his university education. This chap replied that his father did. The Prof did not stop there but went on to ask what job the father was holding. At this stage , the chap replied what has all this got to do with the recruitment talk that he was attending. Apparently the others become very uncomfortable seeing a fellow Singaporean being treated in such an insensitive and clearly a racist manner.
The son called up the father and told him that he will never ever come back to Singapore to work breaking the heart of his mum. I was stunned when I heard the story. My feeling is that this should have been raised to Yaacob or one of the Malay MPs.
By the way, the fees for University tuition in OZ is around $50K a year. This Prof obviously was stunned that a Malay family could afford to pay such fees. The father runs his own factory.
There is a twist to this story. Since the 1980s, the Govt under various schemes such as IMAC, PIPS and SIMS all under PMO have attempted to bring in quality FTs prior to the ope gate policy that we see now . They have repeatedly failed in the Malay category. They tried in Indonesia and did not succeed. They even approached Malay professionals who migrated to OZ from Malaysia and also failed. Now here is a Singaporean Malay who turned up for recruitment and was absolutely treated like shit.
If I was Yaacob, I would tender my resignation as this is one case, they should have intervened if they were aware of it and I understand this story is making the rounds in Singapore. Lets see if this story does the job as many people were present when the inquisition took place on one fateful day in Australia. Rajaratnam must be turning in his grave together with his pledge which I am sure that chap was reciting during his school days in Singapore.
