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By Ramumenon Recent comments on taxpayers and justice by RPK prompted a little digging on my part.
YB Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed asked a question about taxpayers and the size of the civil service just the other day in Parliament. In 2006, there were 1.14 million individual taxpayers and 1.15 million civil servants. Based on these numbers, Malaysia has one taxpayer for every civil servant. That’s a huge civil service. As Datuk Nur Jazlan puts it, should individual taxpayers “..carry the burden of a bloated civil service.” Fair question. At a time when the country is facing a financial crunch in terms subsidizing the price of petrol as well as food prices for the poor, this may be as good a time as any to examine what these civil servants do and the cost to the economy. We need our passport officials, licensing officials, tax collectors, teachers, police, judges, army and other bureaucrats to keep the country safe and secure. That’s acceptable. But then, are there other functions of government that should be given up? As we all know, the Malaysian government spends time and resources looking for imagined crimes. Take sedition for example. - How many police came to RPK’s home recently? - How many were involved in taking his statement or non-statement? - How many were involved in “investigating” RPK’s alleged offence? - How many lawyers and computer experts in the Attorney General’s office spent their time reviewing the evidence for the alleged crime? - How many officials in the court will be kept busy at his trial? Civil servants were involved at every level of this effort to go after RPK. This is also true for Karpal Singh and several others who were alleged to have committed seditious offenses. Can Malaysia afford to have civil servants keep track of the Rakyat to ensure that government, which is comprised of representatives of the Rakyat, is NOT defamed? Lets look at other governmental activities. Do we need to maintain detention facilities in Taiping to lock up individuals who have committed political offenses? And just the other day, I read a complaint from Ku Li that the Special Branch was keeping track of him as he made his rounds of UMNO branches seeking support for his uphill bid for the party’s presidency. And do we need “uncivil servants” on government payroll use explosives to dispose of a tourist - you know what I mean! There are several other examples of the government monitoring the behaviors of the public. Malaysia, it appears, has lots of civil servants doing economically unproductive activities. Can we afford that luxury anymore? So here’s my suggestion. The subsidies on petrol are going to be withdrawn – a huge impact on the Rakyat. Why shouldn’t the government make some sacrifices too? Stop hiring civil servants except for essential or critical services. Retrain the civil servants monitoring public behavior (and morality) to do more productive activities such as in areas affecting public safety, public health and education. Thousands of motorists are killed on our roads every year, thousands of new drug addicts and hundreds and of new AIDs cases every year, and we could do with better teachers and instructional methods in our schools and universities. Focusing on these areas will not only be more productive economically, but also improve the safety and well being of the Rakyat. The PM has just invited civil servants to contribute ideas to help the government address the problem of increasing subsidies. Well it’s about time he asked the Rakyat to contribute ideas on what to do with the bloated civil service.
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but what happen here in malaysia is the civil servant is created for pos vote what a loser BN
While the most efficient Singapore civil service has only about 1% of its population employed in this sector.
I can only presume the level of "gives and takes" in the Malaysian civil service.