KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 — The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) has 6,809 vacancies for posts deemed crucial, some of which involve senior and junior officer departmental positions.
It is understood that this situation was caused by several factors, including the compulsory and voluntary retirement of personnel.
Utusan Malaysia reported Bukit Aman Management Department Director Datuk Zaini Jass as saying the vacancies are based on the reality of current and future assignments, and they must be filled to strengthen service delivery to the community, including ensuring that the quality of investigations is not affected.
“The total complement of PDRM at this time is 130,815 people comprising 14,624 senior officers, followed by junior officers (103,989) and civil officers (12,202),” he said, as reported by Utusan Malaysia.
Zaini said the original plan was to fill the vacancies by recruiting a total of 7,200 trainees for the Basic Police Training Programme (PLAK) this year.
However, he said, currently only 808 trainees have been undergoing PLAK training at three Police Training Centres (Pulapol) since last March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the admission of trainees at some Pulapol has been delayed due to movement control order (MCO) 3.0.
“The continuity of PLAK is important because the needs of officers and other members of the force are very critical apart from ensuring that law enforcement continues to be carried out in an efficient manner,” he explained.
Zaini said PDRM will be revising the PLAK schedule at all training centres to increase the number of new trainees to 5,904 for the remainder of 2021 if allowed by the National Security Council (NSC) and in line with the phase three of the National Recovery Plan (NRP).
He said these trainees are expected to complete their basic training in 2022, according to the course timeline set.
On June 23, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who was then the senior minister for security, announced that police training centres and military camps nationwide were not allowed to conduct any activities during MCO 3.0.
However, exemptions were given to those who had been undergoing training before the lockdown came into effect.
