MGG Pillai Commentary View

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As the civil service, so the country

"THE OFFICER IS ON leave" is the frequent answer to Malaysians who turn up on an appointed date. The office should not shut down because the officer is on leave. But the practice in Malaysia in the last 35 years is for files to be under lock and key, which the officer takes with him on leave. This is not how the Malaysian civil service should function. But instead of the checks and balances that exist, it is now controlled by a Malay-Islamic group, usually at mid-level or lower. It is incumbent on civil servants to leave their office on transfer or promotion to make his office more Malay and Islamic. The non-Malay in the civil service is a rarity. But his promotion is stunted by this group, the "fairness" in the system is seen in the promotion to the top of perhaps three non-Malays.

With the result, even the chief secretary, the highest civil servant, look to this group before he takes a decision. But this attitude pervades the uniformed services as well. A solitary Indian joins the police as an inspector 33 years ago, good at his job that he was made the Malaysian representative to an international crime preventing organisation, retired as an assistant superintendent of police, never having gone on a beat, or served in the police districts. He was posted to district headquarters once, but that was because he was to be promoted before he retired. But one of his Malay batch mates became Inspector-General of Police, and several, all Malays, were in the chairmed circles surrounding him. There are no senior non-Malay police officers now who can interact with their communities.

The recent nude squat scandal, in which a Malay girl said it was she and not a Chinese girl in the widely distributed video pictures of a girl doing the nude squat, which dried up tourist traffic from China, and for which a Malaysian cabinet minister apologised to the Beijing government, should not have happened. But if you are stopped by the police, or you go to a policeman for help, you would often be penalised. Tourist in the Malaysian police vocabulary means the Caucasian white, though not these days from the Caucasus. This white tourist, even if he is a hippie, is treated better by the local policeman, than a multimillionaire from Asia wanting to invest in Malaysia. An Indian business man wanting to sell back to Sime Darby its Indian unit, which he had bought earlier, was not allowed to come to Malaysia although his plane was. He went to Singapore instead, and told the officials to sign the agreement there instead. An Indian immigration chief, invited by his Malaysian counterpart, went back after he was not allowed in.

This happens despite annual meetings, usually away from office, to improve services. Even the judiciary now meet to improve itself. Every Wednesday after, a post-cabinet meeting discusses cabinet decisions. This is meant for officers, particularly heads of departments, to understand policies that the government had formulated. Often, after the briefing, heads of department discuss the policies at a meeting often headed by the secretary-general. In addition, he holds a bi-weekly staff meetings so that problems in formulating policy would be discussed. There are other meetings for lower officials. These meetings are also to tell the head of the chief secretary, and through him the cabinet, of problems the civil service encounters.

While the civil service is doing all this correctly, it ignores its role in making life easier for the public. It is helped in their work by the modern high-tech equipment and IT gadgets. But people, whom they are to oversee, are let down. It takes longer for the public to get what they want. Once, the EPF took days to issue a cheque after a request for withdawal. Today, it takes three months to process the application. It takes the judiciary years, in some cases, to write its judgements, more now with all the labour-saving devices at its command. Judgements were handed down much earlier when the judiciary did not have all these devices. The general reaction of the public is that the judiciary is worse now than ever. And so all government services.

Where it affects the public, it is worse. Rubbish collection is not regular. The officer is more concerned about procedures, than dirt being removed. The worker in the ground does not often know what he has to do. Or prefers not to know. The non-Malay dare not open his mouth to protest, and the Malay in charge prefer not to do what he is to do. The system has been destroyed. A minister once said the system is good as its results. It is no use saying that the civil service follows the latest international standards in administration. You can find it is not working by asking Telekoms for a telephone number you had forgotten. You are left pressing numbers and listening the same old spiel: "Your call is important to us", and holding the telephone for minutes on end. This is so in many government departments, where you hear the added message, that the officer is not in. Now, this fever of technology has hit the private and government-linked companies. So much so that help is asked for only if you have time to spare and need practice in pressing numbers on the telephone. Try calling Astro, and you will know that this "high-tech" nonsense seeps into private companies.

Instead of the civil service advising the politicians, it is often the other way around. The government service ignore what they should follow, and instead curry favour with those in power. How else could the prime minister's son-in-law, who holds no official post, ride rough shod over them? It was he who wanted petrol prices raised, to meet a shortfall between the projects he had proposed for the Ninth Malaysia Plan, and what was budgeted for. The public does not know what is being doing in their name, and they now demand an accounting. But the civil service, with the connivance of politicians in power, prefer to do in secret, often putting the man-in-the-steet shortchanged.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com