BN government’s past record in treating the Indian community shows that it is a government that cannot be trusted

Press Statement by M Kula Segaran, DAP National Vice Chairman and MP for Ipoh Barat in Ipoh on Friday, March 21, 2014

BN government’s past record in treating the Indian community shows that it is a government that cannot be trusted

It was reported yesterday that at a meeting with the Government Retiree Association, MIC Vice President S Sothinathan called on the Indian voters to vote BN and Prime Minister Najib would meet the demands of the Indian community.

He said that Najib had promised to get more Indians employed in the civil service.

“Indians will get 7.5 percent of the jobs in the government sector. Najib has promised us this, “he said.
I am most shocked by such big news announced by Sothinathan.

My first two questions to him are—if indeed the Prime Minister had made such a promise, why did not the Prime Minister personally make the announcement? And what will be the time frame set to achieve the target, another 20 years?

Can Sothinathan tell the Indian community why BN government, despite having been the government for decades and having made many past promises, has failed to meet the community‘s demand of 7.5% quota for Indian civil servants?

On 19th October, 2009, in reply to the question by the Penang Chief Minister and MP for Bagan, Lim Guan Eng, the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Liew Vui Keong said that as at September 31, 2009, the total number of civil servants totaled 1, 222. 947. The racial breakdown for Malays, Chinese, Indians and others were 76.2%, 6 %, 4.1% and 13.7% respectively.

In fact, I have revealed before that official government statistics published  in 2007 show that there were 17.4% Indians in the civil service in 1971.

So under the BN rule, the percentage of Indian civil servants has been decreasing, yet Sothinathan has the gall to use this issue to campaign in Kajang by election.

Najib and MIC leaders are no longer qualified to talk about ‘Nambikei” as the BN and MIC have betrayed the mandate and trust given to them by the Indian community.

Hindraf betrayed the Indian community when just prior to the 2013 general election, they had inked a memorandum with BN and subsequently campaigned for BN.

But the BN government committed a bigger betrayal when it failed to honour the promises to Hindraf, resulting in the resignation of the Deputy Minister Wathamoorthy.

BN government’s past record in treating the Indian community show that it is a government that cannot be trusted.

I call on the Indian voters in Kajang to give their solid support to Datuk Seri Wan Azizah.

Her big victory will be a referendum against the injustice done to Anwar Ibrahim and Karpal Singh; as well as  help to strengthen better foundation for Pakatan Rakyat’s mission to capture Putrajaya in the next general election.