A bloated, inefficient and expensive civic service dominated by Malays

by Nick Khoo

There are several thorny issues facing in the Malaysia civic service.

1. Overstaffed and bloated organization.

Malaysia has a whooping 1.2 million civic servants headcount, the highest civil servants-to-population ratio in the Asia Pacific.

Malaysia 4.68%
Thailand 2.06%
Indonesia 1.79%
Singapore 1.47%
Korea 1.85%

2. Overpaid for inefficient service.

Take a look at The Prime Minister Department. The operating expenditure alone is RM 3.9 billion for 43544 staff members is translated to average remuneration of RM7465 per month for each staff which is about 3.5 times higher than our GDP.

3. Malays monopolize civic service and GLCs.

UMNO had transformed public services and GLCs into a Malay private limited companies. The monopoly by Malays is not only depriving job opportunity for other races, they have also shown widespread “a little Napoleon” syndrome sanctioned by UMNO in manipulating and interpreting government policies at their own pleasure to favor bumiputeras.

Federal government appointed SDO in Penang, Nik Ali is a good example.

Bumi statutory quota in the public services as mentioned in Malaysian constitution is 75%, but in reality bumi occupies more than 99% in every government department.

The 2009 statistics for civic servants reveals the number of Chinese civic servants is 2660 and Indian civic servants is 2398. The endangered orang utan population in the Sabah Jungle is much higher than entire non-bumi civic servants.

By excluding 300,000 teaching staff from 1.2 million civic servants, Chinese civic servants occupy a pathetic 0.3% based on 900,000 headcounts.