Cent-GPS: Tax breaks, not quotas can solve discrimination in job market

INTERVIEW | The Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) has dismissed quotas as a possible solution to racial discrimination in the private sector, as underlined in its study published last week.

Cent-GPS principal director Khairul Azwan Harun said the government should instead offer tax incentives to companies.

"Don't talk about quotas. Perhaps offer tax breaks to private companies that employ a diverse workforce," the Umno senator told Malaysiakini in a recent interview.

Another way to tackle racism in the job hiring process would be to bar employers from asking job applicants to provide a photo along with their résumé.

Azwan said this would be worth a try, even though Malaysian names are usually a giveaway to individuals' ethnic backgrounds.

Using fictitious names with similar qualifications, Cent-GPS in its study surmised that private sector employers had a strong bias against non-Chinese applicants.

Its Indian male candidates had the lowest callback rate, while overall Indian and Malay candidates had a callback rate of below 14 percent and 16 percent for jobs that do not and do require Mandarin proficiency respectively.

Conversely, Chinese candidates fared much better, with the male applicant scoring a callback rate of above 30 percent, while the Chinese female was called back more than 40 percent of the time.

Methodology under scrutiny

The study's methodology had come under heavy scrutiny, including by Lee Hwok Aun and Muhammed Abdul Khaled, who published a similar study in 2013.

Lee (photo) and Muhammed said the Cent-GPS' data actually showed that for jobs requiring Mandarin skills, all candidates had a higher callback rate, albeit with the Chinese candidates still being the top choice.

Nonetheless, the researchers said, Malaysians should take Cent-GPS' findings of strong Chinese bias in the private sector to heart.

Azwan welcomed the criticism, saying his goal was to "promote national conversation" on discrimination in the job market.

He also said that he is willing to work together with the Pakatan Harapan government to tackle the issue.

"We're ready to present this to Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran. Let's find the best solution to this," he said.

Azwan gave his assurance that the government would get bipartisan support to work on a solution to end discrimination in the workforce.

However, he dismissed calls by some for Malaysia to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd) to solve the matter.

"We don't need to ratify Icerd just to address this... We don't need foreign laws... If we want to fix this issue we can do it ourselves," he said.

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