Wednesday, August 18, 2010

1.2 MILLION CIVIL SERVANTS

Malaysia's workforce currently stands at an estimated of 11.38 million in 2009.

Throw a pebble up in the air, and the chances are you will hit one civil servant out of every 10 working persons in this country.

When you have 1.2 million civil servants in a country with a population of 27 million, you expect the country's civil service to be one of the best in the region, when it comes to public service delivery.

However, don't be surprised, it doesn't work that way in Malaysia, where the ratio of one civil servant to serve 26 other Malaysians is still "not good enough"; hence, the frequent excuse given of insufficient manpower to do a job. As I look at it, it's not that we do not have enough civil servants, but the failure of our civil service lies with the attitude of the civil servants themselves, all the way from the Chief Secretary to the Government himself to the local council worker.

Before I elaborate further, let me do a quick calculation. If every civil servant is paid RM1,000, and not more, the country has to fork out a total of RM1.2 billion every month. In a year, it is RM14.4 billion. This is too small a figure since MP Liew Chin Tong had revealed in his blog recently that the Prime Minister's department alone already has an allocation of RM12 billion.

Now, I am sure our civil servants do not fall below the poverty line (RM1,500 per month total family income) - at least not all of them, so, let's assume that on average, they are paid RM2,000 per month, we have RM28.8 billion per annum, conservatively.

This may be peanuts in a country where the GDP for 2009 was RM1,333 billion (USD$381.1 billion) (2009 est) but considering that the country's FDI has plunged 81% from RM23.37 billion (US$7.32 billion) in 2008 to just RM4.43 billion (US$1.38 billion), we do have a crisis! We are paying out more than what our country receives in hard earned FDI per annum! Despite the increase in the number of civil servants, we are not putting our house in order to attract more FDI.

What amazes me the most is that with PEMUDAH and e-Govt, we are supposed to have a more efficient Government administration. What's more alarming is that, despite privatisation and billions of Ringgit being paid out to concessionnaires, our civil service has bloated up especially in the past 10 years. What do we expect these additional civil servants to do, when most of the jobs have been privatised?

An email I received from a friend recently shows that, in 1981, there were only 4,414 staff in the Prime Minister's Department. 21 years later, the number doubled to 9,673. In 2003, the Prime Minister's Department had a staff size of 21,045 (an increase of 117.5% in TWO YEARS). By 2009, the Prime Minister's office under Najib was 25,332, but in 2010, we are told the number has doubled to 43,544 people! This is absolutely shocking, unless we are saying that the country's economy is booming and we need more civil servants to better quality service to the public.

With over 1.2 million civil servants, what can we expect? Better quality of public service delivery, of course, because we have one of the highest ratio of civil servants-to-population in the Asia Pacific, according to studies carried out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

While the Prime Minister kept shouting, "People First, Performance Now", the civil servants continue to demonstrate their "One-Eye Closed" attitude.

I found this to be absolutely true when I raised my complaints regarding the quality of public service at Selayang Municipal Council. Complaints were initially raised through our Local Councillor, and subsequently, I followed up on the issue myself with the Council staff. Personally, I was pissed off by the answers given. So, I raised the issue with Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Mohd Sidek, who heads the massive civil service in Malaysia. Two weeks have elapsed, and there was not even a single response from Tan Sri Sidek himself despite numerous emails sent to his office; meanwhile, the Yang Dipertua of Selayang Municipal Council and his men continue to play the dumb game. Last week, the Public Complaints Chief himself came to the ground to investigate my complaint, took a video clip of the complaint itself, and immediately wrote to his colleague, the State Secretary of Selangor, another civil servant; yet, nothing has improved.

The sad thing is that Selayang Municipal Council is one of the worst performing local councils. I have been watching closely this local council for the past 15 years, even when the Selayang area was under Datuk Chan Kong Choy, a BN member of parliament. There were some roads which had no streetlights for over two decades, and despite complaints being raised, nothing was done until the Pakatan Government took over the State of Selangor. In 2008, streetlights were installed in some areas in Desa Jaya, where the residents claimed that they never had streetlights for many years. More streetlights were installed in 2009 for residents of Taman Ehsan. During my time with the Malay Mail about 10 years ago, I had highlighted the plight of these residents, but the Selayang Municipal Council never took the initiative to follow up on the complaints.

Residents of Sutera Apartment in Taman KIP were complaining that the streetlights along Persiaran KIP Utama had been out of service for more than four years. Nothing was done until I started to kick up a fuss on their behalf last year. Numerous calls to the YDP, with him promising me that he would get his engineers to look into the complaint immediately, I only learnt later that nothing had been done. Only after the issue was highlighted, within a month, the Council started calling for a tender, and in the second month, the underground cables were repaired and the streetlights were lit up once again.

This year, I wonder if the Selayang Municipal Council staff would heed the complaints we raised about errant restaurants in Jalan Wangsa 2/6 occupying the parking lots, through our Local Councillor, Zulnizam Shahrani, or through the Chief of Public Complaints Bureau, Dato' Dr Tam Weng Wah.

I no longer have confidence in the Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan. After one year of follow up with the Selayang Municipal Council, I thought highlighting it to the Chief Secretary to the Government would help, since this is a matter involving some lackasaidal civil servants in the local council; but two weeks into my complaints to Tan Sri Sidek, there has been no improvement in the way the Council staff work to solve the issue.

Let me end by saying this: the Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary should realize that by playing the political game in cohort with the civil servants will not only cause the rakyat to lose confidence in the Civil Service of this nation, but also make it apparent that the "People First" slogan is nothing but an empty slogan, played up by a largely bloated Prime Minister's Department, where there are four ministers and four deputy ministers, plus 45 different agencies under its wings. The Government Transformation Plan, which has to start from the top, has apparently not taken any effect yet. Walk the talk, Dato' Sri. Look into our public drains (like the one in the picture above) and see where are all the curries gone to!


The Prime Minister's Department
  • Minister's Office in Prime Minister's Department
    • Office of Y.B. Dato' Seri Mohamad Nazri Bin Abdul Aziz
    • Office of Y.B. Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon
    • Office of Y.B. Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Bin Yakcop
    • Office of Y.B. Senator Dato' Mejar Jeneral (B) Jamil Khir Bin Baharom
    • Office of Y.B. Senator Datuk Seri Idris Jala
  1. Office of the Chief Secretary to the Government (KSN)
  2. Administration of the PM's Dept
  3. Attorney General Chambers
  4. Auditor General Office
  5. Biro Tatanegara
  6. Cabinet Constitution And Government Division
  7. Ceremonial and International Conference Secretariat Division
  8. Chief Government Security Office (CGSO)
  9. Chief Registrar's Office
  10. Department of Insolvency Malaysia
  11. Department of Statistic
  12. Department of Syariah Judiciary of Malaysia
  13. Department of Zakat, Wakaf and Haji
  14. Economic Planning Unit
  15. Education Service Commission
  16. Election Commission of Malaysia
  17. Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA)
  18. Human Rights Commission of Malaysia
  19. Implementation and Coordination Unit
  20. Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia
  21. Islamic Department of Federal Territory
  22. Islamic Development Department
  23. Judicial and Legal Training Institute
  24. Keeper of the Ruler's Seal
  25. Legal Affairs Division
  26. Legal Aid Department
  27. Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency
  28. Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit
  29. Malaysian Institute of Integrity
  30. Muslims Religious Division
  31. National Institute for Public Administration
  32. National Palace Administration
  33. National Security Council
  34. Office of Federal Secretary, Sabah
  35. Office of Federal Secretary, Sarawak
  36. Parliament of Malaysia
  37. Penang Regional Development Authority (PERDA)
  38. Perdana Leadership Foundation
  39. Pilgrims Fund Board Malaysia
  40. Property and Land Management Division
  41. Public Complaints Bureau
  42. Public Service Commission
  43. Public Service Department of Malaysia
  44. Research Division
  45. Syariah Court of Federal Teritory

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