KSN and DG of JPA should resign

Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd. Sidek Hassan

The proposed Saraan Baru Perkhidmatan Awam (SBPA) which was supposed to be introduced and come into force this month for the civil servants is now gone. Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Mohd. Najib Tun Razak announced to revert to the existing Sistem Saraan Malaysia this morning.

Published: Thursday March 8, 2012 MYT 10:45:00 AM

Najib: SBPA scheme to be scrapped

PUTRAJAYA: The Public Service New Remuneration Scheme (SBPA) has been scrapped, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razakannounced on Thursday.

He said the existing Sistem Saraan Malaysia will be implemented with improvements.

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The SBPA, which is said to have intended for top civil servants be remunerated like top executives in the market, was rejected vehemently by Ceupacs. The proposed scheme is focused to the remuneration only for the stop civil servants, currently from Jawatan Utama Sektor Awam C (JUSA C) and above, with proposed increase in pay and allowances more than 50%. The top job was said to jump from the current RM 20,000.00 band to RM 60,000.00 with retirement bonus in the neighbourhood of RM 1 million.

The middle management and senior officers don’t get that much and worse still, the lower graded personnel which amounts to 80% of the 1.2 million civil service get only a few hundred ringgit increase each, at the most.

What is interesting to the argument why top civil servants should be remunerated like the contemporaries in the GLCs is that civil servants enjoy better job security and even promotion opportunities as compared to their colleagues who are in GLCs. Senior GLC executives are subjected to two or three year contract terms. Most importantly, GLCs like any other corporations need to show record and performance. If it is a public listed company, then they need to comply to strict market and industry regulators. For the shareholders, which is also the government, they have figures presented for measurement.

Ministries and even agencies on the other hand, does not. Malaysian public understand very little of what they do and achievements they get. Unlike agencies like Employee Provident Fund, Inland Revenue Board or Royal Customs where occasionally there are announcements on their revenue collection track record, almost everything else is oblivion. Sometimes, MPs and Senators need to raise in Parliament to get the numbers.

The civil servants never tell the public of their ‘score card’. How much target did they achieve, at what cost and more importantly, how much savings they manage to get achieving their targets were never provided for the tax payers to ponder. The Chief Secretary to the Government and each ministries should do this first before allowing themselves with extra ordinary pay rise proposal.

The only safeguard the rakyat have is the Auditor General report, to highlight all the irregularities. However, there is no good system to measure performance and achievements.

The Chief Secretary to the Government, who is the head of the civil service and Director General of Public Services Department, the department in charge of human capital for the civil service, should step down immediately for their botched-up high stake proposal to the Federal Government and thus created so much stirred up of hostilities and huge of negativities. It is a direct defiance of Prime Minister Najib’s 1 Malaysia slogan where the ‘rakyat comes first’.

In the civil service, the ‘rakyat’ is the majority of the lower graded personnel and not the selected hundred fifty or so in the ‘Club of KSUs and DGs’.

Even when the civil servants within JPA deliberated and processed the SBPA proposal and tabled it for government’s decision, Prime Minister Najib gave a lot of room for Ceupacs to have their say on it. After consultation with Ceupacs, he has proven that civil servants are the planners and executors of Federal Government policies and not the determinant. Prime Minister Najib’s decision today proves the point that the ‘bigger picture’ is still paramount.

- bigdogdotcom