We have a bloated civil service with about 1.1 million people, including the army and police. When we started privatization, one of the main reasons was to trim the civil servants. At that that time about 20 years ago, with the labour workforce about 8 million and 1 million of civil servants, we are talking about in every 8 workers, there is 1 civil servant. After many privatization exercises, Telekom, TNB and etc, the number of civil servant was cut down to its original level of about 800, 000. Last year, civil servants were given about a 35% increase in salary. As far as I know, there was no such increase in salary in private sector.
The poor government delivery system is also one of the causes of the failure of BN government to fulfill its promises. The workers in local authorities can be regarded as mother of all inefficiency since they are the one that comes into contact with the rakyat, and with the growth of inefficiency, indifference and corruption, it has also become the cause of friction between the local residents and government agency. Since local authority comes directly under the state government, any federal government initiatives seem to be going no where. It is also a well known fact that part of these inefficiency and indifference among the local authority workers is that a lot of them are engaged in part-time work which unfortunately become full time. A lot of them end up as hawkers, taxi drivers, some working in restaurants and since they are from local authority, even if they are illegally operating, the enforcement officer will also close one eye and this forms another source of dissatisfaction of rakyat when it comes to enforcement by local authority. If the government allows civil servants to work part time officially, I’m afraid there will definitely be abuse, productivity affected and commitment to job lacking. Imagine government servants from enforcement units are allowed to work in private sector.
When it comes to combating inflation, it’s not just the pay. It is the lifestyle that is important. Go to any golf club, including in the smaller town, it is not uncommon to find that the early golfers are government servants. While I am not saying that government servant should not play golf, they should not be there during office hours to indulge in expensive batting and also possessing fanciful and expensive golf set and attire. Government should impress government servants that they should cut their clothes according to their size. No amount of increase of salary or supplementary income will be able to cope up with the rate of inflation unless we change our lifestyle. If you go for lunch in any hotels (not a cheap way of lunch), you will bump into mid level government officers, enjoying lunch.
Government should not encourage their own workers to work part time. What happened if the private sector also allows their workers to work part-time after office hours? There are a lot of qualified and skilled woman who are not working because of rather rigid working hours. We should encourage flexi working hours, especially in private sectors because this will encourage those presently unemployed to work. This I’m sure will supplement the income of a lot of family. Only 45% of Malaysia women are working compared to developed country that runs from 70-80% because of availability of flexi hours of employment. I’m sure this will help to reduce foreign workers.
The poor government delivery system is also one of the causes of the failure of BN government to fulfill its promises. The workers in local authorities can be regarded as mother of all inefficiency since they are the one that comes into contact with the rakyat, and with the growth of inefficiency, indifference and corruption, it has also become the cause of friction between the local residents and government agency. Since local authority comes directly under the state government, any federal government initiatives seem to be going no where. It is also a well known fact that part of these inefficiency and indifference among the local authority workers is that a lot of them are engaged in part-time work which unfortunately become full time. A lot of them end up as hawkers, taxi drivers, some working in restaurants and since they are from local authority, even if they are illegally operating, the enforcement officer will also close one eye and this forms another source of dissatisfaction of rakyat when it comes to enforcement by local authority. If the government allows civil servants to work part time officially, I’m afraid there will definitely be abuse, productivity affected and commitment to job lacking. Imagine government servants from enforcement units are allowed to work in private sector.
When it comes to combating inflation, it’s not just the pay. It is the lifestyle that is important. Go to any golf club, including in the smaller town, it is not uncommon to find that the early golfers are government servants. While I am not saying that government servant should not play golf, they should not be there during office hours to indulge in expensive batting and also possessing fanciful and expensive golf set and attire. Government should impress government servants that they should cut their clothes according to their size. No amount of increase of salary or supplementary income will be able to cope up with the rate of inflation unless we change our lifestyle. If you go for lunch in any hotels (not a cheap way of lunch), you will bump into mid level government officers, enjoying lunch.
Government should not encourage their own workers to work part time. What happened if the private sector also allows their workers to work part-time after office hours? There are a lot of qualified and skilled woman who are not working because of rather rigid working hours. We should encourage flexi working hours, especially in private sectors because this will encourage those presently unemployed to work. This I’m sure will supplement the income of a lot of family. Only 45% of Malaysia women are working compared to developed country that runs from 70-80% because of availability of flexi hours of employment. I’m sure this will help to reduce foreign workers.
8 comments:
For once I totally agree with you. The private sector has been totally ignored for pay increment and the security guards, supermarket workers,etc work long hours and their pay is pittance compared to the civil servants who enjoy shorter working hours and pension when they retire.
Oh yess... there was no 35% increase in salary for private sector ever. Well, unless you are in advertising and have won some big time awards for the company... than perhaps.. but than again, one will have to work their ass and busts off to get that 35% increment!
Oh yess... need we say more about the standard of our government delivery system. What do you expect?? Even the mother of all heads of department aka Badawi sucks in his delivery... what more the rest?? Sigh...
Oh yess... the lifestyle of a lot of government officials need to change! The change your lifestyle slogan is for the government servants and not for us!! But of course, being government and thick skinned, such logic cannot never penetrate into that rhino skin of their skull!!
Oh yess... as you have mentioned, you too know that the way to go about things is to have flexi hours to encourage more women into the workforce and this will help their household income.. Sigh.. but can our Dumbo Bimbo government see such logic?? of course not!
Sigh.. our administrative aka government is getting from bad to worse.. Sigh.. with a new cabinet and new faces, instead of new fresh workable ideas and perhaps more dynamic ways, we end up with really really MAlaysian Funniest Video clowns!
See how civil servants rape rakyat's rice bowl.....thxs. for BN's governance lar.
The civil servants already have risen in their basic salary and have so much better incentives/allowance than ordinary public servants still they are not sufficient and asking for more (one word to describe: Greedy). The goverment have fine-tune them for greed...
This means no more efficiency and transparency for rakyat's piority.
First of all if civil servants were allowed for well paid why not approve for MTUC???
The goverment is sending a message to the public lower income group :You have to work like Hell! I don't care if your employer is cutting or trimming down your allowance or incentive, it is needed to sacrifice for country's inflation.. especially dealing with petrol hike and rice problem...
Amusing isn't it??
So, you people out there..would you still vote for BN???
Don't you remember how much monthly entertainment allowances they are granted?? Where these money comes from??? It is from rakyat!!!
Dr,I myself have come across many times regarding poor gov't delivery system.At one time I went to the National Registration Dept.At the counter there were 3 ladies giving out the queue numbers (over staff for that stupid job co's the queue machine is self operating)soI got the number and waited for my turn.While sitting you can notice there were 5-7 counter staff.But the numbers don't move very fast co's the staff can be seen talking to each other,some goes to the toilet.They don't really bother to care about you waiting. And to my suprise when my turn comes it's lunch break leaving 1 staff to tend to bout 30 over people.This type of attitude will cause people to be anti gov't.Imagine the staff just think about their stomach whereas the people waiting for their turn deserve to wait.Not only in this dept such bad attitude are found,there are such as sesco,Immigration,customs etc.The worst every knows is the police dept.Just try to call some gov't dept.You can't get to the person you would like to speak to especially in the morning. I suspect they don't come to the office on time.Now is even worse,football season,high fuel etc add to their 'late work syndrome'.Try some gov't banks,you can see the staff eating during work.They don't seem to care that so many customers are watching.This fatty staff just giggle, laugh and enjoy while the people waiting just wait.It' is never ending,WHY? For me I say it's the education,the way they are brought up,the working attitude,the mind set and their thick skin (insensitive to others)that all added up to these poor gov't delivery system.Now if they are allow to work part time then it's all hell broke lose.You can be sure to find police working in snooker centers,custom officers working in 'high duty' paying companies,immigration officers working with indonesian maid employment agencies,gov't bank officer working with Ah longs,nurses working in illegal massage parlours,gov't doctors having 'second secret clinics',ambulance driver driving for some towkays.This are the scenarios that will be the result of gov't giving second job to its workforce.Imagine....?????
Dr
You have good input and your insights drawn from your first-hand experiences are invaluable. I do not doubt your sincerity.
Regrettably you lack a proper platform. Your current situation with MCA is untenable. You being an outsider of a totally defunct party. You are also no more an MP.
To make yourself more effective, you need to move away from this situation.
All the best
Dear Dr. Chua,
I don't think it is the right way for the Civil servant to work part time. I understand the current ecocomic situation in Malaysia, as the rise in the cost of living, but it shouldn't result in government encouraging them to work part time. As everbody know about the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the government angencies in Malaysia, which before the government encourage them to go work part time. What will happen if this happen? What will be the result? Good or Bad, nobody know!!! I don't mean to talk bad about our country, i am just stating the fact!
Government servants are asking permission to work because they were not paid enough to maintain their lifestyle. They are not paid enough because they have large expenses to meet, and they usually have big households to support. More than 80% of civil servants are Malays. On average, they will have 1.5 times the size of average non-Malay households. That is because while other communities considered it their own duties to look after members of their own households, the Malays were not encouraged to practice family planning as it goes against their ability to vote and maintain political power. The past fifty years of UMNO rule created moral hazards among Malays that the government is responsible to bail them out when they are in trouble. The examples of rich UMNO politicians in kampong give them hope that larger household gives better chance to them becoming rich, if only one of them make it to be UMNO leaders.
The government servants are 'underpaid' because the government employs too many people. But when degree holders are unemployable, the government has no choice but to continue to feed them, after having led them into tertiary education when they should have been made to face the real world to work hard and to fully realize their potentials rather than chasing paper qualification. But UMNO knows only that preferential treatment for Malays at tertiary education is the well tested proof to show ordinary Malay voters that UMNO bully non-Malays on their behalf.
The problems that we face in the country are rooted to race politics. UMNO promotes racist policies so that Malays would support it out of fear, and the desire to retain the capacity to bully. MCA and MIC could not leave BN on their own for fear of untoward happenings.
MCA and MIC should take the opportunity to dissociate themselves with UMNO as a coalition party. MCA and MIC should make their organizations apolitical, and form a new political party to include all their members. That party should open its membership to all Malaysians, irrespective of race. The Gerakan party can be the vehicle to absorb all MCA and MIC members. Gerakan should first secede from BN, and form coalition government with BN if UMNO agrees, or else leave BN as the second opposition party after Pakatan Rakyat. Gerakan can then work with the party of the willing to form the next government.
Forget it! It’s not appropriate that our civil servants are paid enough to serve us. There's a belief that a hungry army will not only not performing as they should, they might "revolt" and doing a lot of things they shouldn't like corruption... etc...
Or, if the rakyat agreed, did they mean to say that the whole BN cabinet led by Pak Lah should start to work part-time as well if they don't earn enough?
It'd be a shame for the nation, man!
After all, the civil servants had just had their salary increased by very substantial percentage (by 25% & above?)Just recently; now they are encouraged to do part-time in order to pay all their bills sound like we're really in a big crisis.
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