INJUSTICE

I went in for an interview for my PhD scholarship on the 9th of April and felt quite confident. Then, seeing that there were too many candidates from the Center for Languages and Human Development, they have decided to reduce the number. All this week we have been hanging by a thread to see who gets to go and who don't.

All this illustrates to me is how small our worth is compared to the engineering and IT faculties' staff. They were going on and on about why should they send us to do our PhD when you don't need all that much to teach English and other soft skills.

This is the attitude that is ruining our country. They are holding us back based on that alone. Imagine, the government allocate 100 places and they only interviewed 70 odd. Because of our "anak pungut" status compared to the technical faculties' staff, we have been working harder than everyone to ensure that we meet the qualifications. While others can get away with only teaching, we have to beef up our portfolio by writing papers, doing research and consulting in addition to our regular teaching hours. Can you imagine, I am involved in 4-5 research projects, wrote 8-9 published and presented papers while all these "apples of the management eyes" are just coasting by. I ruined my health contributing while the other lecturers from the other faculties were whining about how they had to come to university functions. Just to attend a function is like we are asking them to give up their firstborn or something. We are the minority and when we asked about our career track during our meeting with the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academic, he said, "Trust us! We will not leave you behind." Yeah, right. For two years we didn't send more than a handful to pursue their studies.

There's no justice in this world and I protest most strenuously.