Yesterday, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced a substantial pay rise of up to 35 percent for civil servants and 42 percent for police and military personnel.
As much as this blogger would like to question the timing of the increment, let me first congratulate all the beneficiaries as it has been a while since the last pay rise. I honestly believe and hope that this move would help to elevate working spirit, reduce the corruption level (fingers cross) as well as attract and to retain the best and brightest in the bureaucracy.
However, while announcing the salary increase, what’s lacking in the PM speech is a timely reminder on what’s his, or rather taxpayers expectation towards the deliverables.
Since they’ve been promised what they’ve been asking for, it’s fair enough for us to expect a clean, trustworthy and efficient civil service in order to cope with a rapidly changing external environment. To meet the challenges ahead, it’s essential that the civil service keeps pace with the community it serves, improve itself and enhance its efficiency.
A proper appraisal system should be put in place to reward performing servants and remove redundant staffs to ensure taxpayers’ money are well spent too. Apart from that, this is the best opportunity for civil servants to implement structural reforms in order to make the public system more flexible and better meet the needs of Malaysians.
More importantly, don’t you think there is no better time than now to prove to we Malaysians that you truly deserve the increment, do you?
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[...] the pay rise plan is now materialize, we as taxpayers have the right to demand quality service from civil servants [...]