FOR NAJIB, THE PRIORITY IS HIMSELF & ROSMAH: TOO MANY CIVIL SERVANTS, NOT ENOUGH MONEY – GOVT BODY WARNS OF ‘URGENCY’ TO SLASH HEADCOUNT

PETALING JAYA – There is an urgency to cut the number of civil servants in the country to bring down the country’s operating expenditure, which is an important indicator when it comes to competitiveness in the global arena, said Malaysia Productivity Corp (MPC) director-general Datuk Mohd Razali Hussain.

“We’re targeting budget deficit of 3% of GDP (gross domestic product), we’re doing the right thing. Cutting it down (will make us ) become more efficient and it will push our productivity,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

However, Razali declined to comment on how many civil servants should be cut.

“It depends on which area, we cannot comment on a whole,” he said.

Under the operating expenditure of RM214.8 billion announced in Budget 2017 last Friday, RM77.4 billion was allocated for emolument spending. Malaysia’s civil service employs 1.6 million people.

MPC, a statutory body under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, is tasked to provide value-added information on productivity, quality, competitiveness and best practices through research and databases.

Razali highlighted that Malaysia needs to adopt a lean management strategy to further improve the process and cut down the number of people handling it.

“It’s because more people are handling it (processes), it will be exposed to corruption. Too much focus has been given on the approval application, but not much is being done to make sure that it is done right,” he said.

Razali also noted that more people have to be put in place to ensure that the actual business operations are checked properly.

“The process has to be reviewed every five years to make it more effective,” he opined.

To increase productivity, Razali said Malaysia needs active participation from both private and public sectors.

“It’s not just about the private sector being more efficient, the public sector also needs to facilitate the process of doing business.

“In a country like Canada, they’ve an indicator called participating rate (which will see) how good is the participation in all the initiatives. You need participation from people not just in terms of implementation, but also people responding to it. Then we can improve productivity,” he explained.

Commenting on Budget 2017, Razali applauded the measures announced by the government, which will help improve the indicators in the country’s competitiveness report.

“How we can implement it speedily with less budget to accomplish this. That also helps competitiveness. We need collaboration from everyone, be it private sector, ministries or Pemudah (The Special Task Force to Facilitate Business) to make sure the measures are implemented efficiently,” he added.

THE SUNDAILY