What will Pakatan do with a bloated Civil Service?

Extracts from World Bank report:

World Bank lead public sector specialist Rajni Bajpai

It highlighted claims of employment bias in the civil service, noting the strong public perception about the sector’s lack of neutrality. Malaysia scored very poorly on the indicators for impartiality in the government, The Star reported.

“There is a strong perception … that recruitment of the civil service is not fair and neutral (with) Malaysia scoring very poorly on the indicators for impartiality in the government,” Rajni was quoted as saying.

“It’s the lowest ranked, even below the region and way below the OECD.”

Pakatan Harapan in its election manifesto had suggested the need for an Equal Opportunities Commis­sion meant to tackle discriminatory practices in both the public and private sector. Its status remains unclear.

The World Bank report said Malaysia has one of the most “over-centralised” recruitment structures in the world. This function had been devolved to other departments and even state governments in other countries, Rajni said.

Public sector hiring in Malaysia is carried out by the Public Services Department.

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Kaytee notes:

Ever since the Malaysian Civil Service, once the towering hallmark of Malaysia's impeccable civil service, not only in Asia but in many parts of the world, came under the interfering hands of an old dictator, and coupled with his reckless irresponsible Ops Isi Penuh, which was a go-for-broke over-massive recruitment for the Civil Service (objective to reduce unemployment of Malay Youths from the streets), the Malaysian Civil Service has never been the same.

Let's revisit some old narration I made in previous posts.


In a Malaysiakini letter by Dr Kua Kia Soong (extracts):

The civil service in Malaysia is pivotal around Article 132 of the Constitution of Malaysia which stipulates that the public services shall consist of the Federal and State General Public Service, the Joint Public Services, the Education Service, the Judiciary and the Legal Service and the Armed Forces

For all intents and purpose, Statutory Bodies and the Local Authorities are also considered as parts of the Public Services. This is because both these autonomous bodies resemble the Public Services in many respects since they adopt the procedures of the Public Services pertaining to appointments, terms and conditions of service and the remuneration system. Besides that, their officers and staff also receive pension and other retirement benefits similar to the employees in the Public Services

As a result of Ops Isi Penuh, the civil service reached 1.15 million in 2006. Though Mahathir 'retired' (wakakaka) in 2003, the momentum of Ops Isi Penuh, strated in 1983, could not stop 

Centre for Global Affairs Malaysia (Icon) president Abdul Razak Baginda [wakakaka] recently reproached journalist John Pennington for an article that places Malaysia’s civil service in an unfavourable light in comparison with its Singapore counterpart.

Among the reasons for the Malaysian civil service’s lower proficiency, Pennington claimed, were its size and its dominance by Malays. Razak’s rebuttal offers no good justifications for the bloated civil service in Malaysia, except to say it has to do with the need for ‘affirmative action’. Methinks Razak Baginda doth protest too much.

Malaysia’s bureaucracy is one of the biggest in the world, with 1.3 million civil servants from a population of 30 million, or 4.5 percent, compared with Singapore’s civil service (1.5 percent), or those of Hong Kong and Taiwan (2.3 percent).

We are spending more than RM41 billion a year for upkeep of the civil service. Now you could protest that Singapore and Hong Kong are small city states, but what about a larger country like Taiwan?

While it is the growing trend of many countries to reduce the size of their civil service, Malaysia’s Prime Minister’s Department in particular has done the opposite. It has more than doubled its own number of civil servants from 21,000 to 43,554. In stark contrast, the White House employs only 1,888 staff.

Now, what was it that Pennington said that riled Razak Baginda?


FMT reported (extracts):


Pennington highlighted a 2015 World Bank report that ranked Singapore as the world’s best for government effectiveness. Malaysia was placed 43rd among 170 countries.
Among the reasons for the Malaysian civil service’s lower proficiency, Pennington claimed, were its hugeness and its dominance by Malays.

He also said Singapore’s decision to pay its civil servants well and its willingness to embrace new technology were some of the reasons for its civil service’s proficiency.

Razak slammed back, saying ........

........ he would advise Pennington to get a better perspective of things before making such comparisons.

“I would like to quote our great Dr Mahathir Mohamad who once asked: ‘What’s so difficult about managing Singapore? It’s like managing Kuala Lumpur,'” he said.

“In terms of diversity, population size, physical size and much more, managing Singapore is just like managing Kuala Lumpur. You cannot compare oranges and lemons.”

He pointed out that Singapore also did not have to deal with the unique challenges Malaysia faced, such as affirmative action policies.

Then, Dr Kua wrote (September 2017, wakakaka):

Consider this: despite the bloated civil service and having sent hundreds of government scholars to the best universities in the West all these years, we still had to spend thousands contracting consulting firm McKinsey to write our Education Blueprint! Were there no Malaysians capable of writing our own Education Blueprint?

The oversized bureaucracy has, in turn, created massive leakages in the economy. In 2010, then Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) president Omar Osman revealed that a total of 418,200 or 41 percent of the 1.2 million civil servants in the country were suspected to be involved in corruption.

The 2009 Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) report revealed that Malaysians generally consider political parties and the civil service to be the most corrupt groups, and the government’s anti-corruption drive to be ineffective.

The offer of Prasarana chair for the previous inspector-general of police so soon after his retirement shows the revolving door culture between the civil and armed services and the corporate world.

resigned from Prasana in July 2018 when PH become government 

This practice is inimical to good governance and breeds corruption and non-accountability, because of kickbacks and favours rendered by civil and armed service personnel in the awarding of contracts.

Both Dr Kua and Razak Baginda have been right, to wit, Razak's contention the bloated civil service has to do with someone's affirmative' action (yes, Razak doth protest too much and I'll come to this in a while) as well as Dr Kua's criticism of the Malaysian civil service as being over-bloated and inefficient.

I needn't go into the issue that the Malaysian Civil Service, which includes its Armed Forces, Police, Immigration, Customs, etc etc etc are made up of virtually (almost) one race, namely, the Malays.

It is an issue born out of official approval.

Once upon a time, back in 1983, there was an administrative Operation called Ops 'Isi Penuh', whence Civil Service leaders were ORDERED to f**king staff their departments up, or ELSE.

Guess who gave that order?

T'was none other than the Emperor who also mutilated the Constitution, Judiciary, Senate and of course, with his Ops 'Isi Penuh', the Malaysian Civil Service.

Yes, it was affirmative action, but with a selfish sinister personal political motive, namely, to remove unemployed, idling but voting-youths off the street and presumably into UMNO's vote bank - remember, he was UMNO's President, wakakaka.

But the Operation was over-the-top, perhaps because we had lots and lots of money from our once wealthy oil resources, so WTF with a few pence here and there - all sap sap suoi stuff. Thus was his reign blessed with mucho money to waste in a profligate manner.

Even Malay Department heads grumbled at the reckless irresponsible 'Isi Penuh', but what could they do against His Imperial Majesty? By the end of 2006, more than 90% of 1.15 million civil servants were Malays.

That was how your once-Emperor (and now too, wakakaka) operated.

Yes, the Operation was ordered from the No 1 Man, thus in the mad rush to meet his imperial order, rubbish was recruited in that neo-Nazi ordered 'Isi Penuh' scramble. Thus today you'd get rubbish out, and the malaise has not stop since.

From 2003 to 2017 and early 2018, it was not his problem - usual stuff, his successor(s, wakakaka) have to deal with it.

In early 2017, then-Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani openly and honestly stated that the civil service, although bloated, would not be reduced, but be made more multi-tasked, to improve productivity, wakakaka. Which PM dared(s) to sack civil servants in massive lots?

We now have one civil servant serving 19.37 people. The ratio is 1:110 for Indonesia, and for China 1:108, while it is 1:50 for South Korea. We won’t compare ourselves to the low ratio of 1:71.4 in Singapore because it’s embarrassing.

Razak Baginda had then repeated Maddy's kok-tok about Singapore being like ruling KL, when even KL itself did not perform to support his views.

You need only look at how Singapore is being run to see the nonsense of Razak Baginda's valiant but vain attempt to defend Mahathir's policies, wakakaka.

Currently, the Civil service costs RM74 Billion per annum (2016 figures) and another RM19 Billion n pension.

Productivity has been sh*t considering we have 1 civil servant per 19.37 people, yet there have been undue delays, corruption and lackadaisical attitude in services towards the public.

The downhill journey for our once-impeccable Civil Service started with Ops 'Isi Penuh' which doubled its workforce of approximately 400,000 to a massive 800,000 in 1983. When Mahathir left office (1st time, wakakaka) in 2003, the numbers went up to more than 1 million, with 90+% of them being Malays.

As just mentioned, the imperial conceptualizer was none other than your only Emperor of Malaysia.

Like most of his schemes, with his Minus Touch, Operasi Isi Penuh was a terrible failure. The only redeeming factor in his favour was Malaysia's then considerable oil wealth which masked his eff-ups.

But in fixing a tactical personal political problem, he as usual, endowed us with a strategic headache as he had done so with so many other issues, eg. judiciary, senate, forex, bmf, bank bumiputra, maminco, memali, Sabah illegal influx, perwaja, proton, bakun, road tolls, etc etc etc - aiyah, so what's new?

My uncles and friends related how Operasi Isi Penuh was seen to be exorbitantly, needlessly and excessively profligate in its implementation, where they recalled department heads being instructed in no uncertain terms and even pressured to 'top up' their staffing a.s.a.p.

Suffice to re-iterate, it was all about political gains for Maddy and his ruling party, and not so much about public service for the rakyat, because even until today, many Malaysians even have mucho complaints about services at government departments and agencies, where in some extreme cases, the public servants became the Tuan and the tuan-rakyat became the servants.

But Razak Baginda has been right in that it was 'affirmative action' but masked as such to hide its real aim, not unlike Project Blue IC in Sabah.

eff you lot 

I wonder whether such profligacy, as in our numerous cases of profligacy over the past 35 years, was an outcome from the curse rather than the blessing of our then considerable oil and gas assets.

We then had too much wealth which might possibly have led to such excessive extravaganza including, I heard, dropping a Proton Saga at the North Pole - and for what? For Santa Claus?

Let's see what the Pakatan Harapan government (or is it just Mahathir's government?) does about its election manifesto promise for the establishment of an Equal Opportunities Commission to tackle discriminatory practices in employment. I won't be surprised if that promise is being or will be or perhaps has already been capati-ed.

ask Pakatan Harapan