MAY 23 — The prime minister said the country’s per capita income would be increased to US$15,000 when tabling the 11th Malaysia Plan in the Dewan Rakyat recently. Many of the targets set have been excessively “bold” and I wonder where the PM derived his boldness from.
For instance, family monthly income will be increased from RM2,537 now to RM5,270 within five years. How is the government going to do that given the increased burden of the rakyat thanks to the GST and global uncertainties?
The government also wants to cut the fiscal deficits from 3.2 per cent of GDP to only 0.6 per cent while government debts from 53.3 per cent to 43.5 per cent How is the government going to do that against the backdrop of increased number of civil servants and ballooning administrative expenditure, and the fact that the government’s operating expenditure makes up a whopping 81.6 per cent of total expenditure this year?
Although the Public Services Department has announced to freeze hiring civil servants, vacancies resulting from retirement, transfers, deaths and service termination still need to be filled anyway. The PSD will only freeze the hiring of new employees, meaning the existing 1.61 million civil servants (as of end 2014) will still remain on the government’s payroll. There is no leaning exercise here and the remunerations and perks will still be dished out generously.
If the government fails to create 1.5 million new job opportunities within five years, the so-called freezing of civil servants policy will likely be reversed in order to accommodate the rising number of school leavers.
As for the government’s plan to introduce an “exit” mechanism for public services sector to get rid of underperforming civil servants, it is not a novel idea and has been proposed by the government years ago, as a matter of fact. However, taking into consideration civil servants as the vote bank of Barisan Nasional, the government has not put the plan into practice.
Chief secretary to the government Ali Hamsa said last year that one civil servant had been sacked since the AG’s Reports 2012. Why on earth that only one man was axed given the fact that so many irregularities had been exposed by the AG’s Reports?
We can see from here that indeed a government job is a sure bet. I am sure all Malaysians will welcome an “exit” mechanism that really works.
The government has aspired to make the country a hub of world-class education, including sending two local universities into the list of QS top 100 global universities. The failure of local universities to make it to the top 100 list can be attributed to our poor academic and teaching quality as well as research capabilities. If we really want to enhance our universities’ ranking, we must liberalize academic pursuit and stop all the political intervention.
The government has the boldness to set unrealistically high targets but do not have the courage to implement the necessary reforms in order to achieve those targets.
The forced resignation of Universiti Malaya’s Centre for Democracy & Elections (UMCEDEL) director-general Professor Datuk Dr Mohamad Redzuan Othman and the sedition charge against UM law lecturer Azmi Sharom, have proven the reality that academic freedom is only a castle in the air.
As for public transportation, we also have a fair share of bold initiatives, including the bus service transformation program under the 11th Malaysia Plan to provide punctual, reliable and safe journeys for passengers. We have yet to see whether such initiatives could be brought to fruition. Before talking about improving bus services, perhaps the government should look into ways to halt further financial losses on the part of bus companies.
The 11MP has also made mention of developing the agricultural sector and this time the concept of “urban agriculture” has been proposed. Many of our agricultural programs in the past have failed because the farmers do not have arable land, including vegetable farms destroyed by the floods in Cameron Highlands recently.
Our road safety policies also lack continuity. The much criticized AES system is almost non-functional now, but the government has plans to revive and expand its implementation. If the authorities have been really serious about the road safety demerit system, then we won’t see so many people deferring payment of their traffic offense tickets today.
All the above-mentioned administrative irregularities have been a consequence of the government’s laxity over the past 58 years. If the government does not pick up a few lessons from past mistakes, rectify its weaknesses and reform the stale mechanisms, how is it going to do so many things in the next five years what it has failed to do in over half a century?
The government should not just paint a rosy picture of the country’s future, it must overhaul its mind frame and policies, and enhance its efficiency in order to restore public confidence and achieve the vision of a developed nation. — mysinchew.com
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
