Comments on: [1236] Of bad pay hike to ruin the civil service

By: Hafiz Noor Shams

Hafiz Noor Shams — Sat, 26 May 2007 12:13:15 +0000

Dear xpyre, For #1, it depends on the quantum of the raise. High a enough a raise, the flat regime would cost more than the recently announced raise. (I am unsure what do you mean by real increase though. I cannot see how inflation is being incorporated into the discussion meaningfully). FYI, I have written earlier how overzealous pursue in achieving income parity is unwanted. For #2, I have heard so too but if it is about achieving parity, I do not believe it would achieve that target in its current form, as I have described in this blog post. Regardless, I think the most important question is how does the raise increase competitiveness?

By: xpyre

xpyre — Sat, 26 May 2007 03:03:23 +0000

One thing, though: from what I heard, this pay increase was to sort out disparities between levels of pay between top civil servants and junior staff, right? Won’t it turn out that the real increase in allocation for wages for the civil service be less than if the increases were flat across the board? The spending, therefore, may not be as much. Can anybody confirm this?

Secondly, I’m wondering if this recent wage increase exercise has less to do with productivity than correcting wage disparities between the private and public sector? I totally agree with what you say about productivity, but I’m wondering if that is the focus where the wage increases are concerned.

By: Hafiz Noor Shams

Hafiz Noor Shams — Sat, 26 May 2007 02:50:30 +0000

Dear both,

Thanks for coming.

I would like to make it clear that when I wrote horizontally and vertically, I mean levels of the organization structures. Horizontal would refer to everybody on the same level. Vertical would refer to the difference between the CEO and the cleck, etc.

By: Emmanuel

Emmanuel — Fri, 25 May 2007 23:11:21 +0000

Its also not going to solve the bridge of income between the civil service and private sector, only delay it for another round.The “Mendatar” and “Melintang” increment system is too outdated where even civil servants from the professional category only gets less than 200 per year, as opposed to as much as 400-600 in some private held companies,especially the larger ones like the one I am attached to.Also, this income disparity is further widened by the annual bonus payouts, which is in most cases significantly lesser in terms of quantum as well as gross amount,than the private sector.

Its a double edged sowrd situation where while the income per capita and disposable income level averages for the population increase, so does price hike occurences and so on.The biggest real estate hike in Malaysia occured during the last civil service salary increase.Those who benefit would be profiteering businessmen while the common man is left poorer.Unless they uniform out the civil service salary to a similar model to that of the private sector, this infinite loop of “Suffer 10 years-Attempt Leverage-Price Hikes/Inflation-Back To Square One” will continue.

Meritocracy should be introduced to the civil service as well.Rewarding the lazy and hardworking with the same amount, at least to me, is a mild form of Mao communism, all are given the same thing anyway.

By: mob1900

mob1900 — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:32:26 +0000

me wonders what’s the digital-online-system-paperless-blablabla systems are for? maybe we need like 5x civil ‘servants’ to tell us it’s ‘Offline’ and come back another day.

if Bedol takes populist approach on puny issues like arguing with AFC on MUFC, he should heed the ppl’s to quit… sleeping on the job.