I read this interesting article about being a Malay in Singapore and how you are not being treated fairly. I will share with you my experiences of hiring Malay workers too and you may well understand why they are seen to be poor employees.
I employed more than 10 delivery drivers in in company during it's 15 years of operation, there are malays , indians and chinese taking up this position and at the end of the day , I lost faith in the malay worker because of his poor attitude and irresponsible character. The indian driver was not too bad except that he chain smoked to thedismay of other staff and feeling guilty conscious he decided to go .
As for the chinese worker , they have been reasonably reliable and hard working , using their initiative and puntual too. However, they have high regard for themselves , they cannot accept criticism or advice if they do their work wrongly. They think they are smarter than their boss and demand higher salary too. So we decided to give chinese a miss and emplyed a malay .
After 1 day of work , he never turned up on the next day, when I called him on his mobile , it was switched off. Then I call ed his home , the mother said he went to work as usual and I left a message for him to call back which he never did. I took in another malay candidate and he worked for 3 days , disappeared on the 4th and when I called his home , his wife told me he went to Malaysia for urgent business to settle. I told her to inform him to call me asap.He called the next day , I asked him if he is still keen to continue , he said "up to you " . I had a shock but being desperate since there are work to be done , I said ok. When there was appropriate opportunity , I asked why did he go malaysia, he said religious matter and I felt real uneasy because that was the time when 911 took place and his behaviour was rather strange and he refused to elaborate on his trip. By the way , he wears a goatee, like the Osama kind of look except that he is broad.
After a pep talk with him , he continued to work for 4 years with me but not without any hiccups.He is often late for work and in the morning when I dont have much work , he will hide himself in the second level of my shop house without his t-shirt to catch sleep instead of stationing himself at the ground level to do some chores or help out . Other workers complained to me that he's always sleeping upstairs and out for a smoke without leaving words and come back at least 1 hour later. During urgent times when we wanted to look for him , his H/P is switched off , when questioned , his reply is always , no battery or prepaid time left. But when he is in the office , he's always on the mobile phone either SMSing or talking! I am puzzled with his unending calls.
When he got married hastily to a foreigner , I advised him not to start a family too soon as he's always broke and now with a foreign wife and elderly parents to support on his $1500 salary , it's going to be tough. I was also worried that he may not be able to keep this marriage so it's better not to have children first , it may be safer to consider having kids when the marriage is more stable. But he ignored my advise and the child came 9 months later , he could not manage as wife is so young ( 17 years old ) , he's 35 then and his elderly folks cant assit much . In the end he was unable to work consienciouly ,making errors in all the assignments . i tried to accomodate his lost of concentration and bear with him although most emplyers would have fired him. I even bought himlarge cans of milk powder , pampers on a monthly basis to help him out as he's penniless most of the time. Poor foreign wife of 17 years , she's out of the frying pan into the fire. thinking that she will have a better life after leaving Cambodian padi fields and have a good life did not materialised. The beauty of it is ,soon after the child turned 1 , she was about to deliver the 2nd baby ! I am totally dumbfounded with their family planning strategy.
He was getting worst from bad in his work and the last straw was when he went out on an assignment , he did not return until late evening . It will only take 2 hours at most to finish this assignment , when I told him he took too long to do this , within minutes he has a typed resignation letter for me with a handwritten date. I did not retain him this time as in the past when I usually give him a chnce taking into consideration of the inconvenience when changing staff. Even when he left , he did not give me adequate notice , simply said he found a new job paying $2500 at PSA . This was exactly 8 months ago when we were in the midst of the recession ! I wished him well and did not talk further.
Since then I tried a few more malays but sadly it was disappointing . One came in the morning and just disappeared after telling the staff that he wanted to smoke outside at around 4 pm. He never came back and cannot be reached on the mobile. I SMS him the next day to find out if he is coming , he replied in the negative. Then the next malay came along , he worked for 2 days and left without a word, after some phone calls , his family member said he's like that , never hod a job for long and told me not to wait for him.Next it was a well dressed malay in his early 20s , he was so keen in the job during the interview and when given the job he did not turn up. I called , he answered and he said he cant wake up , I told him to come asap , he said ok but still did not turn up.
After all these bad experiences , I gave up hope on them , I engaged a foreign worker , his pay is so much lesser but I still pay him a decent salary instead of taking advantage of his situation. He works hard and has good manners , it's already 3 months and each day he makes me feel happier.
I strongly feel our local employees are not fully committed to their jobs , they want an easy job that pays well . They are not prepared to use initiative and will only work when told. But we are no longer in the age of slavery , we cant whip them to get them to work. It's time for all Singaporean workers to take pride and responsibility in their work if they want to live a comfortable life.
Please do not think that the malays or indians are marginalised , they are all given similar opportunities but they must prove themselves.
