YOURSAY | Time for civil servants to buck up

YOURSAY | ’The Malaysian civil service is highly bureaucratic and inefficient.’

Ditch culture of contentment, PM tells civil servants

Man on the Silver Mountain: The civil servant topic. I can only say this – nothing will change the government servants and therefore Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s call to ditch the culture of contentment will not have any effect.

Life will just go on as usual. This is because the civil service institution is so entrenched in its characteristics it is a monster of its own. Nobody can change it unless you kill the monster.

Almost all government servants see their jobs as being a livelihood – “periuk nasi”. You do what you are required to do, and at the end of the day, you receive your monthly salary and live just enough. Nobody sees it as more than that and therefore there is no motivation to make it more than it is.

Prime ministers will come and go and the civil servants know it. They are there permanently, not the prime minister. Another prime minister will come after Anwar and it is life as usual for them. Probably all government servants in all countries behave similarly. I have been to quite a few, and they were probably not much different from their Malaysian counterparts.

It’s the reason why developed countries try to trim down the number of civil servants as much as possible. The civil service in Malaysia is bloated. Again, the reason for that is it is a place for livelihood. Coupled with the race-based government policy, it is mainly for a certain race, except for some window dressing here and there.

Hopefully, Anwar will revamp the civil service. Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad tried privatisation but the net result was still the same.

OceanMasterII: A very politically correct statement to the civil service by Anwar but it is too soft, they will not understand the intent without explicit mention of consequences.

The top civil servants have their fiefdom. People below them have to perform “leader worship” to get anywhere, especially moving upward in their career progression.  

1. While they are top public servants, the public doesn’t get to see them. Massive offices, with perks beyond imagination, chauffeur-driven, offices full of executive assistants, and on and on. All these are paid by the taxpayers but they feel this is an entitlement. Curtail these excesses first and hold them accountable to the public.

2. There must be an aggressive digital transformation of the civil service and a successful strategy will allow for the reduction of the number of civil servants to hundreds of thousands (guesstimate). That is what the country needs.

3. Consolidate and shut down redundant departments. There are way too many of them and the main cause for red tape is bureaucracy and bribery.  

4. The best advice is that civil servants must be beholden to their jobs and not politicians. So politicians must face the consequences if they exploit or bully civil servants.

World Citizen: The Malaysian civil service is highly bureaucratic and inefficient. Many government servants are not competent and they do not understand their job. This is the result of years of bad education policies and also using race as the main criterion for government jobs and subsequent promotions.

To make matters worse, those rejected or those who cannot find employment in the private sector are roped into the government service. Every successive government has adopted this approach for its vote bank. These government servants have been spoiled by being paid increments and bonuses and given promotions even though they do not perform.

It is very difficult to change their attitude and it will take a very long time and effort to correct this situation. If the new government tries to be hard on them, they all will rebel and won’t cooperate and also will take it out at the voting booth. So, you can make some changes here and there but that will remain only cosmetic.

Vulcan King: The most out-of-proportion composition of the Malaysian civil service by one race was done by the politicians in the name of race and religion to safeguard their political positions after the May 13 incident.

It is not in any way the fault of that particular race as a whole but of the politicians vested with self-interest to hold on to their political power. 

Anwar should slowly start reorganising the racial composition of the civil service to reflect the racial composition of the country without disrupting existing civil servants. Those politicians who are against this move should be identified and shamed so that the public will not support and vote for them in elections.

A civil service with a harmonious racial composition at all levels can complement and become the backbone of government administration both at the federal and state levels.

It is time that civil servants are recognised and allowed to carry out the tasks of administrative work without any interference from politicians or politically influenced superiors. If that happens the Malaysian civil service can get back its glorious pride, respect, and reputation of the yesteryears.

Does the current government have the backbone to bring that to reality? Only time will tell and if the prime minister kicks things off, we the Malaysian people should wholeheartedly support it.

FellowMalaysian: Anwar says the culture of contentment must be avoided. What he meant to say is to stop that lazy-bone stupor and start working your butts off. The past thirty years have seen civil servants treat their jobs like it is their god-given right to assume such positions. Past BN-led governments have been molly-coddling these 1.6 million government servants because they see them as their vote bank. 

Anwar also said some government contracts come with “high commissions” and “you simply cannot succeed as a nation with high leakages”. In other words, plugging corruption is paramount if there's any chance for us to catch up.

Appum: Do we still have a public complaints bureau? The public needs an avenue to report the little napoleons. However, the best way to get rid of corruption in the civil service is to make sure that there is efficiency and speed in all matters when dealing with the public.

For example, when people know that their applications or approvals will be settled within a specified time frame, they will wait and not offer bribes to civil servants who may deliberately sit on these applications. The government should know that efficiency kills corruption!

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