YOURSAY | Raising civil servants’ pay good for economy

YOURSAY | ‘A wage increase should come with proper productive measures in the salary scheme.’

COMMENT | Anwar's civil service pay hike brave, progressive

Milshah: As I have mentioned time and time again, Malaysiakini columnist P Gunasegaram is one of the few writers who call a spade a spade.

He writes based on facts. You can never go wrong when you talk with facts.

Many may see it as apple polishing but if you were to read his previous articles, Gunasegaram had his fair share of criticism of the government. He is unbiased and professional. For that, he earned my respect.  

He mentioned that government servants are not bloated. This has been what many critics of the government would say.

Why do they say it is bloated without facts? Sour grapes maybe? They probably want more non-Malays leading the government.

It's not enough that the private sector is dominated by non-Malays but the public sector as well.

As Gunasegaram states, they “talk sweepingly about corruption, inefficiency, incompetence, discrimination”.

We want more. We want more. We want more. That is their real agenda. That is the battle cry.  

In Keynesian Macroeconomics, one way to kickstart the economy is for the government to increase expenditure instead of reducing expenditure.

The theory is that as the government increases expenditure by making more projects (mega projects in former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's time), by increasing civil servants’ salaries, they would in-turn start buying cars, houses, take more bank loans, buy shoes, clothes, go for holidays, and buy more food.

This will have a positive effect on the industries as greater income leads to more consumption and eventually increases the aggregate income of the country.

Industries experiencing high demand from civil servants would need to employ more people, leading to more job opportunities.

They would require more managers, more lawyers, more accountants, and more workers to meet the demand from the consumers.  

In other words, I agree with Gunasegaram that increasing the government servants’ salaries is the right step.

Hopefully, it will work and kickstart the economy for more growth.

Coward: When we say the civil service is bloated, we use a few metrics.

The common one is the ratio of civil servants to the population and our figure is atrocious, compared to other countries.

The next common one is to look at productivity and efficiency.

For this, I don't need to recruit other countries for reference. Just compare them with the private sector.  

Productivity and efficiency are some of the metrics that I feel the raise is not justified.

Why should we pay more for less productivity and efficiency compared to the private sector? This difference is not justifiable.  

Then we don’t see the reward going to the person. Reform is just a word on a slogan. 

There’s a reason why people are moaning about civil servants’ salary increases, it’s that we feel strongly that it is not justified. We have yet to be convinced otherwise. 

Just look at our neighbour Singapore. Their civil service pay is so high that they don’t take bribes.

As for putting pressure on the private sector to raise wages, that is the wrong approach.

Wages should increase naturally with inflation or better productivity and efficiency.

This pressure to increase wages is artificial and not sustainable. All it does is to make us all worse off by decreasing our competitiveness.

UNDECIDED: Minimal salary adjustment of two to three percent for 12 years is not the way to treat employees from the civil service or private sector if inflation is taken into account.

I just hope this decision to raise their salaries will be a catalyst to do the same for the private sector but it must be related to productivity and efficiency.

On whether the civil service is bloated, the best comparison is probably with Singapore, where we should be able to get reliable figures to compare with.

I believe the comparison with Western nations does not match “like with like”. Using the factor “labour share of gross domestic product” to establish whether Malaysian employees are getting a fair share based on their current salaries is probably a good way of measuring the right level of salaries that should be paid.

Again, Singapore is probably a good comparison as, based on the year 2022, Singapore's 43 and Malaysia's 32.4 are quite close, probably because their foreign workers are paid a better salary.

Chefoo: As a former civil servant, this looks like an apple-polishing article. What wage reforms are we talking about here?

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s announcement of a salary hike is merely another populist tactic. 

A wage increase should come with proper productive measures in the salary scheme.

Just a mere verbal warning that underperforming civil servants will not get a pay hike carries no weight. In the civil service, whether you work hard or shake your legs, salary and grade promotion come with a timescale.

The excellent service award is like a controlled commodity.

By right, it should be given to those who excel in their work in every aspect but that’s not the case.

The prime minister himself refused his salary due to the country’s economic constraints. Is it necessary to give a pay hike at a time like this? 

Traveloka WINNING: As for employers, it’s pretty simple. I will pay you for what you are worth.

If you are demanding too high then I just won’t employ you. I will retrench you even.  

If the government is forcing me to raise wages, I will also raise the price of my service and if I can’t take it, I will just close down the whole company. Let's see who lost out in the end.

So no, “progressive” is not necessarily always good for anyone and everyone.

Communism is as progressive as you can get. Just look at the former USSR and Mao’s China and see where it leads us. Finally, on the labour share of GDP.

However, a higher labour share doesn’t always mean better.

As noted above, communism is a utopia where the labour share of GDP is as close to 100 percent as you can get. Now how does that work out for everyone?

LimeKijang6362: Employees in the private or public sector should be rewarded but only based on performance.

How can you merely increase salary without a clear comprehensive on what is to be achieved etc and a thorough review of performance? Who monitors heads of departments that give excellent reviews to those who butter them up? 

There are so many around who do nothing more than “work” when bosses are there, take credit for others' toil and polish their way up.

Open your eyes and reform the system, ensure fairness. Then we talk about pay increments.

Reduce the number of civil servants. It is about time to think about employing civil servants on a contract basis. 

VoteOfOne: An increase in wages without an increase in productivity will only cause an increase in daily expenditure costs.

Watch how food prices will increase accordingly because vendors will now have an increase in potential disposable income in their market.  

What’s next? Set up another department to catch vendors for increasing prices and call it profit gouging.

Vendors could always pull out minimal profitable products from the market. Then, the government allows the importation of that product.

Let’s guess which government-linked company will be awarded to do just that. This is similar to the policies that US Vice-President Kamala Harris regurgitated recently.

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