Cuepacs, please stop your shenanigans – TK Chua

When politicians engaged in endless quarrels, policy issues were allowed to go autopilot.  I am referring to The Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) and its shenanigans again. 

First it demanded that PTPTN must go slow to recover the loans from government servants.  Then it defended the right of civil servants to borrow endlessly – from the government, banks, cooperatives and now even from Ah Long.  They talked as if civil servants were the only ones having to confront with insufficient income and high cost of living.  

Now the congress is protesting freeze in new jobs in civil service, arguing that the measure will have serious social and economic implications on the economy. 

Since when did Cuepacs ever come up with one good suggestion other than with its myopic and self-preservation demands? 

Please grow up, Cuepacs.  The government is not your uncle able to continue creating unlimited meaningless jobs in the public sector.  Yes, please get it right – many “jobs” in public service are not only unproductive, they are meaningless.  They add nothing but disservice to the economy.  Hence, by reducing the number of jobs in the public service, economic output may actually go up. 

I have said it a long time ago, nearly two million civil servants in the public service is in actual fact an indication that Malaysia is not a labour shortage country.  Yet we have endlessly allowed millions of foreign workers coming into the country to do the jobs what we Malaysians should be doing.  Tacitly, we have allowed civil service to expand to absorb the unwanted workers. 

Have we ever asked why the number of civil servants has continued to increase when we have privatisation, outsourcing and increasing number of consultants? Just look at JKR (PWD). In the past, this department was the lifeblood of government infrastructure development.  It did everything in-house from roads, government vehicles, schools, hospitals and office buildings throughout the country.  May I know what the department is doing now despite its increasing numbers of engineers and technicians with stratosphere grades? 

The same goes with government hospitals.  How many of the services were outsourced to private contractors with dire consequences.  Have we not heard of lifts and air conditioning in ICU not working recently?  Outsourcing, if not properly implemented, is a form of transferring inefficiency from government departments to private contractors with an added layer of corruption thrown in.  

Then we have endless high paying consultants who were supposed to catapult us into a high income economy. But what earth shattering policies and programmes have they come up so far?  While consultants have the field day, the number of super-scale officers in civil service has continued to increase at the alarming rates. 

Former senior government servants may be able to testify on this.  In the past, major government policies and programmes, including the cause celebre New Economic Policy, were formulated and drafted by government servants.  Now may I know what senior government servants are doing each day other than farming out work to consultants some of whom are still wet behind their ears? 

Public service is an economic function.  Public servants must do meaningful jobs, not just pretending to do work.  There is only so much “slack” an economy can take.  I think we have reached the tipping point.  So stop the nonsense, it is time to make the civil service lean and mean again. – March 8, 2016.

* TK Chua reads The Malaysian Insider.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.