My Longkang

Economist: Ensure fairness in pay rise

A teacher, Cikgu Ali has lamented that his RM50 note doesn’t stretch very far these days. Ever since the dramatic increase in the price of fuel, prices of things and services have gone up whatever rosy statistics the government may chose to quote about how cheap things are in this country as compared to others.

Increasingly civil servants have had to take second jobs, join MLM companies etc. to supplement their income. All lower level and middle level civil servants have had to tighten their belts. Calls by politicians to reduce expenses by planting their own food, walking or cycling to work has met with ridicule by the civil servants: a majority of the civil servants in the urban areas live in apartments and flats. Where to plant such ‘foodstuff’? How can they walk to work or cycle to work when housing near their place of work is simply beyond their means?

Many civil servants as well as the other wage earners in the country have cut down whatever expendable expenses they can ages ago. I believe the higher price of goods including fuel has had a bearing on the the recent state elections in Sarawak.

So the question of a wage increase has been discussed in homes between husbands and wives, at coffee-shops and in work-places. Very simple : it is a bread and butter issue.

Economist Dr Lim Teck Ghee, a former World Bank official has voiced his opinion that the call for a pay increase for civil servants clearly has merit, but the quantum of increase for the higher salaried group needs to be stringently scrutinized.

He argued that rapidly rising costs had led to declining living standards for public servants and their families. The lowest-scale group receives less than RM500 a month, which places it in the group of relative and hardcore poor.”

Dr Lim said a progressive salary increase with the lower scales receiving a higher percentage and the higher scales receiving considerably less was necessary to ensure fairness.

“The salary differential in the Malaysian civil service is among the worst in the world.”

He said a salary review was clearly needed and that Cuepacs and other stakeholders should press for urgent reforms that included structural change to ensure higher efficiency and productivity, merit-based service conditions pegged to market performance, and encouraging recruitment of non-Malays to ensure a more representative civil service.

Cuepacs had called for a salary increase of between 10% and 40% for the country’s one million civil servants.

“In view of the rapid changes the country is facing, it is timely for a Royal Commission to be appointed to deal with civil service reforms,” Dr Lim added.

Yours truly here believes the last thing the country needs now is a confrontation between the civil service and the government. Sit down and work it out. Compromise. We need to work together to ensure the future prosperity of this nation of ours. Politicians : heed the call of the rakyat. Do not forget that a politician is elected and a politician who stops listening to the rakyat is doomed to fail at the polls.