Kolej Yayasan Pahang started out in 1992 as 'Institut Kemajuan Ikhtisas Pahang' - The Pahang Advanced Skills Institute, if my memory serves me correctly. It split into Kolej IKIP and IKIP Skills Training (IKIP Utama) a few years after that. Both have always been under Yayasan Pahang and remained so until Dato Sariah Sa'ad resigned as Managing Director. At that time, I suspect, it was decided to bring IKIP formally under YP and become KYP. IKIP had applied to become a Kolej-Universiti, like KU ShahPutra (the main rival in Kuantan), but was denied by the Ministry of Education for (probably) political reasons.

Anyway, IKIP had employed foreign lecturers prior to re-branding as KYP. I was one of those and I was hired in 2000 based upon job interviews held in Subang Jaya. I was working at a different college in SJ and tendered my resignation in order to move to Kuantan and work for IKIP. Here is my experience and there is a lesson to be learned.

When I was transfered from the SJ college to IKIP, first my work permit had to be cancelled by the SJ college and then a new one issued to IKIP. It was a touchy process. IKIP tried to use an agent and this pissed off Immigration/Ministry of Education (MoE). The agent forged the signature of the head of the SJ college in order to get Immigration/MoE to act upon IKIP's application more quickly. The IKIP program director and I had to make a quick trip to KL in order to be chewed out by the Ministry of Education (MoE) before they would issue a work permit, and they did two days before I started teaching. It helped that the lady with MoE was the former student of an IKIP board member.

After that, it was easy sailing. IKIP never used an agent with me after that (I went to KL one more time with the program director). I was not the only foreign lecturer. There had been a white guy before me. During my time they hired two Iraqis, one Brit, and one Egyptian. I taught English for only one year before a business program opened up for which I was a lecturer (in English) and program director. I eventually moved into the UTM program and taught engineering subjects in Malay. Ask around; those UTM lecturers will remember "Mr. James".

I left for personal reasons in 2012. After working at IKIP for 12 years, the MoE told IKIP about the 10-year rule and IKIP was not allowed to renew my contract for year 13. BTW, one rule that the MoE began to enforce is that a lecturer can only teach the subject in which they had earned their bachelors degree. For example, a Tamil colleague had a BS in Chemistry and MBA. He was teaching business subjects, but the MoE began to tell IKIP he was only qualified to teach chemistry subjects. Likewise, I had a BS in Forestry (with Hydrology emphasis) and I was teaching Hydrology as a subject, but an MoE prick told IKIP that I could only teach Forestry classes from that point onward.

Anyway, I would not be surprised if some of the English teacher expat group were denied work permits because their bachelor degrees are not in English but some other subject. I know the man who is currently managing director of YP and, thus, KYP. He and I worked together on a couple of projects that went well, but there were some frictions due to the difference in western versus Malay perspective. I flexed for him, but didn't always comply with his requests, conveniently "forgetting" he had made the request.

This is what I suspect happened. The new managing director wanted to raise the English language training at KYP in a big way (typical of YP) by hiring a bunch of English teachers, promoting English widely, and making a large "launch" to tell the world. Lost in the details were the fact that work permits were needed for this large group of English teachers. At the time that I left in 2012, all English teachers at IKIP were Malaysian. So into I/MoE come a pile of work permit applications for people who may not have BA degrees in English, and they are competing against Malaysian graduates who HAVE Malaysian uni qualifications in English (never mind they couldn't speak English). So, I/MoE rejected some of those applications. KYP menjadi malulah!!

But, of course, no one is going to admit to the expat English teacher group what really happened and so they (you) are being given the round-around.

Moral of the story: EFL is a sunset industry in a large part of Asia. Westerners still want to travel the world by teaching English, but the countries are getting more selective and going for locals, cheaper expats (Filipinos), or westerners with PhDs. IKIP/KYP is under pressure to hire more PhDs to make it look like they are a research school but other than PhDs in Comparative Religion, it has been difficult for them to send and retain Malays who want to go that high. I know several former IKIP lecturers who got their PhDs and then quit IKIP to join universities. Thus, a sunset industry + westerners desperate for a job/work permit = conditions ripe for a "scam". (I would rather label it "incompetence or lack of attention to details" by KYP rather than a thought-out scam.)

I have no easy solutions for the expat "group" that got caught between KYP's large plans and the I/MoE rules. You should NEVER take a job without a work permit, and NEVER allow them to use an agent. It is tough, I know. Asian colleges don't like to hire from overseas; they want people on the ground and that is how I got hired by two different colleges in Malaysia. But one can crawl into the I/MoE offices in KL and plead a hardship case. When I joined IKIP in 2000, it was my idea for the program director and I to go to KL directly and appeal to I/MoE. They gave us loathsome looks, but issued the permit before the 4:30 closing time.