Student says no graduate surplus

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 15

Student says no graduate surplus

The lack of graduates in agriculture in Malaysia is a very real problem, with several Government departments struggling to fill vacancies in these fields, a Malaysian student at Lincoln College, Mr P. S. Teng, says in a letter to “The Press.”

He was replying to statements by Denis Wederell, the editor of the Manawatu “Evening Standard,’’ in an article printed on Wednesday, in which Mr Wederell said that a surplus of graduates in agriculture was embarrassing Malaysia, where many could not obtain jobs. “Mr Wederell would perhaps be interested to know that the M.A.R.D.I. (a rough parallel to the D.5.1.R.) has still been unable to get fullv off the ground due to an acute shortage of trained staff,” Mr Teng says. Arts graduates are holding posts that should be filled by agricultural graduates, and diplo mates of the College of Agriculture at Serdang are only partly filling the gaps. Another example given by Mr Teng is the plant patho* logy division of the Department of Agriculture, established in 1905 by the colonial Government. It still had five of its 12 positions vacant. "The seeming anomaly which Mr Wederell purports exists may be explained by the reluctance of many graduates, not bound by scholar-

ship or bursary, to work in rural land development schemes. The private sector can accommodate but an insignificant proportion of graduates from the home university as well as from overseas. “The time is appropriate for these graduates to learn to identify themselves with the rural peasant population, rather than with the bright city lights, however tantalising they may be,” Mr Teng says.