Today: Minister Reticent on Alfian Case

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

This sounds a whole lot like when I was (nearly) hired to take on a teaching/facilitation position at a Polytechnic last year.

I was even invited to sit in on a class and introduced as the next teacher faciilitator to take over. The Poly's HR even issued a letter to the temp agency to let them know that I would come onboard full-time.

Then the Poly does an about-turn and insists I was never hired in the first place. Although I have documents from them that prove otherwise. Their statement about this? I shouldn't have been privvy to those documents even though it was from them and was emailed to me.

I am sure that the reason why I wasn't hired is because they ran background checks and it came up that I am gay and that I was one of the people whose names are listed to attempt to register People Like Us (PLU) as a society.

What is of course most laughable about the situtation is that the particular department is filled with gay people, just not ones who have registered to make PLU a society. Oh well.


MINISTER RETICENT ON ALFIAN CASE
Each year, the Ministry of Education (MOE)receives about 3,000 first-time applications to become relief teachers. And about 100 are rejected for a “variety of reasons”, including “the values they hold and espouse”, said Minister of State for
Education Lui Tuck Yew in response to a question in Parliament yesterday. espite repeated attempts by Nominated MP Siew Kum Hong, Mr Lui would not be drawn into discussing playwright Alfian Sa’at’s recent failed application, adding that it was “not appropriate to discuss individual cases … in this House”. Mr Lui reiterated: “The most appropriate thing to do is for (Mr Alfian) to engage
MOE directly and we can deal with the case on an individual basis.” Nevertheless, Mr Alfian told TODAY he had not heard from MOE since May, when he wrote to the ministry asking for more specific reasons. Said Mr Alfian: “They had given me like their HR policies but I don’t see how I could have contravened any of those.”

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