Letters
by Justin Hong
I was 18 in 1997, I came home half completed my high school in England because my father was bankrupted. He was a contractor bankrupted because the licensee, Taib’s uncle defaulted on paying royalty to the Government. Pocketed all the money my father gave.
Together with 6 of my friends we went to Komat in Sama Jaya to look for jobs as they only required MCE; to help out the family.
The HR lady was an Iban, on our turn she refused to give us application forms and demanded our qualifications. Without even understanding us, we were turned away. On further enquiry from us, she said, the 250 posts were all filled. It was 10.25am and the application counter just opened at 9.30am. Asked the guard to show us out.
Komat repeated publication for the posts for another week. We went back again and again were rejected. This time she asked us to look for jobs in China.
My uncle promptly help the six of us to look for jobs from his contacts. Ironically, we all ended up in Shenzhen China, working in a micro circuitboard plant.
We were trained by some American to be testers as we know English. We did well, so well that within 4 years, we developed a special test using Argon emission from induced current. Testing the board even more thoroughly and 40+ times the efficiency we were doing.
After a few months of trial, the company decided to subcontract all their circuit board testing to us using the new testing system and they got the test done at a fraction of the cost doing it manually.
Within 3 years, we are testing all the circuit board of all the companies in Shenzhen then.
BELIEVE ME, WE ARE EACH NETTING 2 TO 3 MILLIONS USD A YEAR.
We spread to include contracts in a lot of companies of China, US, Germany and Finland.
We now employ 7600 people and 1600 from Sarawak. Bumiputra or non-bumiputra who made the grade we are after.
Why I am writing this?
Today my company has been operating in Penang for 6 months. We are employing 200 people.
I was conducting interviews for senior staff for the jobs. One of the people that came in for the interview was the same Iban lady from Komat 10+ years ago. The lady who turned me away. The lady who told me I was not eligible for the job. The lady who told me the posts were filled when yet to select the first applicant of 250 and the lady who asked me to go to China to look for a job.
I had the satisfaction to tell her all these if I wanted to. Instead I listened to all her talk about how great she had done in her former employment and now she was out on a huge VSS. How well she will do for me with her experience and how much she would like to work for a Chinese boss. She said she is the daugther of an influential bumiputra man and her husband is doing well in business. I let her rave on with her diatribe.
Finally, when she realised she the one doing all the talking and I was not even asking questions, she stopped.
Finally I said, I know her. She was shocked, for now I was properly suited up and not in T-shirt and jeans like the first time we met.
I simply said I like to thank her for asking me to go back to China to look for work. I did, I made it and what she is seeing today and the brochure I placed infront of her is in fact the SUCCESS from disgust and disappointment of being a Malaysian Chinese!!
She was murmuring to herself. I told her, she will get a job from me but not as the senior HR, not as the assistant HR but as an assistant to the assistant HR. She was shocked, happy and almost cried. Then she confessed that her husband was a bankrupt and her 3 children had to be in the care of her sister.
I told her, she meant nothing to me, her race meant nothing to me and what she had done also meant nothing to me. The insults, the frustrations and the anguish of a young man trying to help his father. I told her she would be treated like everyone. She must get her job done or she’d be out like anybody. I told her, I do not care for YBs, bumi policies or business opportunities in Malaysia. I do not need Malaysia. I CAME BECAUSE I AM BEGGED TO COME, BY THE GOVERNMENT OF MALAYSIA.