NEW YORK: The government will be more selective in awarding contracts and other opportunities to Bumiputera businessmen to prevent leakages in its affirmative action policy, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said.
“We want to ensure that those who got the contracts carry them out. If they don’t, we will take it back,” the prime minister said during a dialogue session at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum here yesterday.
He was asked why the policy had not met its objectives and how the new government planned to implement things differently.
“The fact is the Malays are still very far behind the Chinese. To say (the policy) is not helping them is not correct. Many are helped and many have succeeded.
“For example, before, scholarships were only given to the top student. We decided to give to number 2, 3 and 4. And they have performed,” Dr Mahathir said.
One example is the medical profession, where Malay doctors represented only 2 per cent of all doctors in the country when the policy was introduced. Today, that figure has risen to 40 per cent.
“We have corrected the imbalance at least in the medical profession. In other professions too we have made some corrections,” he said, adding that now there are also Malays who are doing well in business.
Dr Mahathir said the policy is still needed to address disparity between the rich and poor.
“If you do away with affirmative action, what do you want to do? If you do nothing, the disparity is going to be worse and there will be tensions between races and between the rich and the poor.”
To an earlier question on Malaysia’s success in reducing racial tensions, the prime minister said whenever there is great disparity between the rich and poor, there will always be tension.
“If the disparity between rich and poor is amplified by being of different races, the tendency towards violence would be much greater.
“We cannot change the race of the people but we can change their economic performance, for example. So we help the weak to catch up with the rich community. That was what we were doing through affirmative action,” Dr Mahathir said.
It has been difficult because the poor often do not have the skills to use opportunities and capital to growth their wealth.
“So we have to give them certain considerations. We have to train them, educated them, and even protect them,” he said.
