PROF P.RAMASAMY

PROF P.RAMASAMY : V.C.MATERIAL

After 25 years of service to UKM and having churned out thousands of students for the country and coupled with his academic works achievements status and stature locally and internationally this is how Prof.P.Ramasamy has been treated. In fact Prof.P.Ramasamy can and should legitimately expect to be the Vice Chancellor and he would have long been one had he been in another country. But far from this he was unconscionably unreasonably terminated as soon as he reached retirement age. Even his former student “qualified” to become Head of the Department while Prof.P.Ramasamy was still retained as a lecturer.
IF you do not call this direct racial discrimination then what do you call it?

Prof.P.Ramasamy’s academic credentials were put to question by the UKM Vice Chancellor. IF that be so how could the very same Vice Chancellor appoint Prof.P.Ramasamy’s former student as head of department when this head of department was “the product of an academically questionable lecturer”!.

We bring to the attention of the UKM Vice Chancellor and the Higher Education Minister the very simple and basic statement of University Malaya’s Chancellor Sultan Azlan Shah (Don’t be degree wills The Star 10.8.2005 at page 17).

“Thus they should find the optimum limit for physical expansion and retain experienced lecturers who have passed the retirement age.

The Higher Education Minister said….professors and lectures were still capable and “full of energy” when they reached the current retirement age….so that they get to retire at the same age as judges now (The Star 22/7/2005 at page 28” Lecturers may get to retire at 66).

IF Prof.P.Ramasamy had been part of the majority community perhaps the above would certainly apply.

Discrimination of this nature is the tip of the iceberg against especially ethic minority Malaysian Indians in both the Public and Private Sectors. How then are we to have meaningful racial integration and national unity and to feel truly Malaysian. It is regrettable that in this era of globalisation we are still held back by “racial considerations”.

The authorities treating all Malaysians as human beings stopping their direct discrimination and transcending across all racial and ethnic lines is the only answer!