LETTER: In response to the article that was published in New Straits Times entitled "Is It Time To Trim The Civil Service?" dated 2nd January 2021, looks like the reduction and cutting down the size of civil servants is still a hot issue.
To start, as we are in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic, the new norm of Working From Home (WFH) has been practiced to curb the virus from spreading. However, the public sector has swiftly adapted to this new norm.
Due to the implementation of Conditional Control Movement Order (CMCO), the government has decided to have a maximum of 30 percent of civil servants to work from offices while 70 percent working from home.
The public service machinery, nevertheless, still runs and operates with full capacity in which all of the civil servants play their respective roles to deliver services to the people.
Another example is Budget 2021. Following the presentation and approval recently, numerous discussions and preparations were done by various ministries just to make sure that all of the rakyat benefit from the budget.
The process to deliver continues so those are are working from home also contributed. On a side note, the so called "fat" the public services carry that should be cut as claimed by some people is misconceived.
The size of civil servants that we have today is ideal enough with the total number of populations in Malaysia whereby it implies the policy ratio 1:20 or 1 civil servant serves for every 20 residents.
To make another point, the 1.6 million civil servants in this country are from various sectors including essential services such as education, security, medical personnel and others in which it is usually not considered as part of civil servants for some other countries.
The public sector continues to do their job in dealing with the Covid-19 that put significant pressure on government administration. All of them are devoting their time and energy to contain this pandemic.
Plus, the use of technology helps, massively, showing how much we have advanced in the efforts to digitise public services, especially the implementation of e-government, boosting administration operations.
WNMWH
Terengganu
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times