Downsizing The Civil Service

The annual Attorney General Report means a lot of bad debts. This is the people's common perception.

Every year, the report repeats the same content. We could do nothing except sighing: the same extravagance, the same corruption and the same waste.

It is a great sorrow that Malaysia, which claims to have the world's largest civil service per capita is actually running an ineffective bureaucracy.

How many civil servants do we have?

It is said that we have 1.2 million of civil servants, while our population is 26 million.

In Japan, the ratio is one civil servant to 155 people as the country has a 120 million population and 820,000 are civil servants.

But in Malaysia, the ratio is one civil servant to 20 people.

Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed said 20 years ago that the government wanted to drastically cut down the number of civil servants to 500,000 people.

However, based on the considerations of votes and in order to resolve the massive unemployment problem of graduates, the government allowed for an unlimited expansion of the civil service, or doubling the size envisaged by Mahathir.

It means that the government's ambitious plan is completely a failure. It is bad that it is a bloated, muddleheaded and careless public delivery system. It is even worse as it is also corrupted and ineffective.

Just like Singapore, Malaysia has inherited the civil service system from the British colonial government. However, 43 years after the separation of Singapore and Malaysia, Singapore has improved its civil service system while Malaysia is getting worse.

The huge civil service department has become a cumbersome bottomless pit that will never be filled.

It means nothing regardless which party is going to be the government or who is going to be the prime minister if the problem is not resolved!

(By LIM MUN FAH/ Translated by SOONG PHUI JEE/ Sin Chew Daily)

MySinchew
2008.09.04