PTK oh PTK...

It rained all morning last Thursday. I prayed hard as I balanced between cycling on the slippery surface and keeping the 1000yen folding umbrella (a gift from Syafiq before he returned to Malaysia for good) steady against the rain, that it would be hujan rahmat, that a lot of rezeki would tumble down with the rain. I was after all, on the way to sit for my PTK exam (Competency Level Evaluation).

I slept in the train instead of concentrating on my notes. Kompetensi Umum, the paper I sat for on Wednesday was not so bad, if you asked me, since it was a matter of reusing and recycling similar points here and there. Kompetensi Khusus is another thing altogether – demanding quite serious studying and revising on various stuff. Still, managed to have last minute discussion with Marha right before the exam began, on topics which one of us covered but not the other.

Out of the five questions that I needed to answer in the allocated 2 1/2 hours time, I was comfortable with one, half comfortable with 2, and simply wrote whatever that came to my mind in the other 2. (7 seems to my lucky number this time around - in both Kompetensi Umum and Kompetensi Khusus paper, my first attempt, being the question I felt most comfortable with, was number 7) What I definitely am not comfortable with is feeling unsure of how my ability of answering these academic questions prove my competency as a government officer. When all was over and done, I pondered on how (in) effective PTK could be in measuring one’s competency level and wondered why more emphasis seems to be given on PTK over seniority in the service for promotion purposes.

Like a friend was sharing with me the other day, say officer A and B sit for PTK exams at different time, A in 2004 and B in 2005. A managed to pass her PTK with Tahap 4, but B had to repeat sitting for the exam. Had B taken the exam at the same time with A, she might had qualified for Tahap 4 too for she could match or write even better answers than A. Does repeating sitting for the exam necessarily makes her a less competent officer than A?

Then, there’s the age and seniority in the office factor. As one grows older, it’s understandable that it will be more difficult to memorize stuff. Some of the questions which ask for 10 examples of this, or 5 reasons for that – requires memorization of certain Code for the Public Service or Government Order, might be deemed to give unfair advantage to younger and fresher brains. Like another friend was telling me the other day, her colleague who is more senior in terms of age and service had to retake the exam three times, but she herself alhamdulillah passed the exam on one sitting. That doesn’t necessarily made the more senior colleague any less competent than her in the office. It was more a matter of ability to “goreng” stuff to make it look good on paper, coupled with some “rezeki” factor that the subject matters one read and spot questions came out.

PTK is supposed to help officers become more competent by knowing and learning all the necessary knowledge and tools – but for all we know, in some cases, there might had been one or two who felt de-motivated and de-moralized by not only having to re-seat the exam, but ending up at the same rank with colleagues far, far junior (like 6-7 years of working experience differences)

Then again, people could always write excellent essays without actually practicing what was written. I am quite sure some could get full marks on questions regarding integrity but are not totally ‘clean’ in their conducts – and I am no exception. I sometimes used government-issued stationery for personal stuff too. (But right now I still memorized all the main qualities of Tonggak 12, so there)

Someone was saying that it’s not the exam itself that makes many feel unhappy with PTK system – it’s just that overlooking the years of services and putting greater emphasis on passing the PTK as merit for promotion that became a cause of concern.

Personally, after experiencing it myself, I would say that PTK provides an opportunity not only to sharpen one’s knowledge in government-service related matters, but also as an exercise to refine and brush up one’s skills in “goreng-menggoreng” stuff on paper. With the presence of all these “pakar goreng”, no wonder we in the government have to study and review so many thick, lengthy, wordy papers and documents.

Oh well.
I pray that I will pass the exam anyway.