A race quota system will not be imposed for the civil service to ensure it is multi-racial as applications from non-Malays for government careers were 'too small' indicating they were not interested, Dewan Rakyat was told today.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz ( pix) said this when replying to a supplementary question from Nur Jazlan Mohammad (BN-Pulai) who wanted to know if such race quotas could be imposed to reflect the nation's multi-racial aspect.

According to Nur Jazlan this could 'resolve many of the problems'.

Releasing statistics on the civil service, Nazri said out of the total of 899,250 civil servants in the country as of last year, Malays comprised 77.04 percent followed by the Chinese (9.37 percent) and Indians at 5.12 percent.

Bumiputeras who were not Malays made up 7.77 percent while other races comprised the balance of 0.70 percent.

The government, he added, received a total of 409,711 applications last year to join the civil service of which 81.45 percent were from Malays, 1.61 percent from Chinese, 2.4 percent from Indians and 14.54 percent from other races.

NEP poser

Nazri further said applications for the civil service from non-Malays were 'too small' in number and that there was 'a culture' which indicated that they were not interested in working for the government.

"We always make efforts to turn the civil service into a Malaysian civil service [...] we advertise and we call them for interviews," he told the House.

Lim Kit Siang (DAP-Ipoh Timor) ( pix, left ) then asked whether the civil service employee statistics reflected the failure of the New Economic Policy to restructure the civil service into a multi-racial one.

He also wanted this issue to be given due consideration under the Ninth Malaysia Plan to be tabled to the House on March 31.

Replying, Nazri, however, alleged that the opposition leader 'only talked but did not give any suggestions".

"We always attempt to make more non-Malays join the civil service. If you just want to 'mengamuk' (go wild) in this House, don't waste my time," the minister answered.

Lim protested the unparliamentary word but was ignored by the Speaker.