The Cost of Manja

The civil service bill

In moving Malaysia forward not only into the newly developed nation status but a high middle income nation, the rakyat must do their bit together with enthusiasm and not leave everything to the Government to realise, execute and bear the cost.

The Malaysian Government under Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib Tun Razak laid out a target to be a high economy nation with the people able to obtain high income, which should be realised with one of many strategies is the rationalisation of subsidies.

The fundamental philosophy of a ‘Government’ is ‘To provide the things and services that people cannot provide for themselves’.

Let us Malaysians take a close look at that. Do we provide and do things ourselves and minimise the burden to the Government?

As  a general rule, Malaysians don’t. They prefer other people to do these things for them. Conveniently, the Government. Anything and everything, even the petty of things in their daily life, they blame and put the responsibility on Government.

Example like the power consumerism. If there are errant traders who do profiteering, can the consumers do anything about it if they feel they have been bullied or treated unjustly?

Oh yes they can! They can boycott such traders. Even the cartel, if the community which felt unjust.

But do they do that? No. Usually they do nothing but complain. They conveniently  put the burden on Government, to act for them.

“Government should……” is one the most widely used phrase amongst Malaysians all walk of life.

Many of rulings and directives have to be ‘enforced’, which means enforcement officers have to assigned. A quick example is ‘meter maid’ by municipalities and local authorities, to enforce parking rules are observed.

This cost could otherwise be minimised if the people in their earnestness abide by rules without much supervision.

Taken that some essential services involving security such as like military, police, prisons, immigration, coast guard etc. have to be provided and manned by civil servants. However, sort which could be automated with the advancement of technology such as administrative is actually growing.

The work demand partly created by service required or expected to be delivered by the Malaysian public actually saw the civil service growth, both horizontally and vertically. Some ministries even provide three Deputy Secretary General positions, with corresponding Divisional Secretaries and Directors.

This is why the civil service is so enormous. 1.6mil people are employed on behalf of the Government to serve cogs and gears of the nation. Inadvertently, this is why to pay for the civil service cost the Malaysian taxpayers RM93 bil or 35.8% of annual Federal Government budget.

That alone is 78.8% chunk off the revenue collected by Inland Revenue Board of RM118 bil.

This is up and above bills that the Federal Government are already paying (at almost 100%) for the comfort of the rakyat, which is health and education.

The left over from direct taxes collected by IRB in the form of income tax and other taxes is RM25 bil, which is supposed to pay for other expenditures.

High operating expenditures such as paying emoluments and pensions for the civil service also means that lesser could be invested in socio-economic development capital expenditures.

The present ratio of 1 civil servant to less than 20 Malaysians is a little too high. This is even higher ratio than pre-corporatisation and privatisation of services like electricity, water, telecommunications, postal and other services.

Realistically, high civil service bill in annual budget is not a good indicator that the nation had moved forward as a newly developed nation. The economy may qualify to be in the cohort.

However, the attitude of the people is pointing towards that they are not quite independently developed.