From The Star Online
8/9/2008
IT'S preposterous to talk about civil servants being affected by the higher cost of living as if they are the only ones affected by it.
Money is never enough no matter how much you have, so the civil servants have to find a way to deal with their finances better. Prudent spending is one counter measure to the higher cost of living.
It's so appalling to see that Cuepacs is not sensitive to the current situation that the Government is facing.
The Government has been flexible in the recent budget towards civil servants, but are they appreciative of it?
Bonus for retirees? How much will that cost us taxpayers? Some quarters will say that I should be appreciative of the fact that the retirees have given their service to the country. Fine!
A high percentage of civil servants get gratuity when they retire and on top of that, they get pension for life, plus medical expenses and other benefits even when they are no longer in service.
I know this because my father was in the service. During his time, there was no such thing as demanding this and that. He was truly loyal to the Government.
He started off as a clerk and worked his way up to asistant director-general. He gave 33 years of his life to the civil service. Never once did I ever hear of demands being made for higher COLA or fixed housing allowance.
The civil servants have it good considering they have a lot of benefits: free housing, government housing loan, medical, gratuity, pension, benefits after retiring, etcetra.
The civil service needs to understand one thing, it is a cost centre. It is a non-revenue generating service.
Try hard as it may, the Government still cannot seem to change the culture in the civil service; less work, more pay, poor service (attributable to wanting to do less work), more breaks and being covered for life.
If these civil servants don't like where they are at, they should seek greener pastures elsewhere.
FRUSTRATED,Kuala Lumpur.
You can list a lot of benefit be it monetary or non-monetary but to put it as a whole, total income per employee for government servant are much more lower than peers in private sector.
BalasPadamWhen talking about delivering system, it is not solely about manpower. The way i see it, the system has not been improved because of mismanagement of public funds. Projects awarded to third party especially in IT to improve business processes ended up with a screwed up system.
Public servants has been so loyal to the government with a reasonable pay and perks; not lavish.
If working as public servant is luxury then we will have so many people pursuing government post rather than private sectors.