SALARY hikes and the surly shouldn't mix, but sadly in our civil service they do.
Just after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced a wage increase, the surly and the shady just couldn't help but show themselves.
A surly one did just days before Anwar called on the more than one million-strong public servants to give their best.
An allegedly abusive Immigration officer, according to a Malaysian who claimed to have seen and heard it all at the Putrajaya visa and permit counter, was at his berating best.
Her TikTok video says it all. In this age of social media videos, it is easy to put the surly on camera — maybe even the slackers and shirkers — but the shady?
The last is a responsibility best discharged by bosses and peers, though the public must help. For reasons known only to the woman who recorded her allegations on TikTok, the incident of the coarse civil servant went unreported.
Civil servants can only be made to give their best if a few things happen. The first thing is to recruit only the best.
By best, we don't just mean the most capable and competent, but also those with the highest integrity. Capability is easier to measure than integrity. But this doesn't mean it shouldn't be assessed.
The second thing is for the bosses at every level of the hierarchy of the civil service, to be vigilant enough to spot the surly and shady. Shirkers and slackers, too, must be within their ken.
If the past is anything to go by, the bosses have done a terrible job. Evidence? The Auditor General's Reports, which are mostly thin on virtues and thick on vice.
This must change and, according to Anwar, the start date of the transformation was Aug 19.
The public, who are the target of the civil service delivery, must not hesitate to complain about its weaknesses, the third thing. Complaints help correct flaws.
Putrajaya, too, must make it easy for the public to lodge their complaints, our final thing. Perhaps an independent central body may help grow public trust.
Who runs such an entity is equally important as how it is operated. Two factors are key to the success of such a body.
Firstly, it must keep the identity of the complainants confidential. The civil service's track record on this is nothing to write home about.
Secondly, it must be transparent about the action it is taking. This, too, isn't worth writing home about. Perhaps it is in the nature of the civil service to keep things secret.
By no measure of our imagination can complaints about service delivery be caught by the Official Secrets Act. People have the right to know what happens to their complaints, especially those that are accepted.
If the people are entitled to raise complaints, as the prime minister assured on Saturday, then they must be entitled to know the outcome of their grievances.
Putrajaya must work hard on not making people feel that complaints against civil servants are pointless.
Borrowing the wisdom of an old saw, we say to the civil servants: if it is not right, do not do it. And to the public: if it is not true, do not say it.