The Malaysian Government must transform civil servants to sync with the leadership. To improve productivity, they can change negative mindsets if coached and trained to develop better attitudes and aptitudes through the strict implementation of KPIs.
Imagine going to the government customer service counter when there is no crowd, and you have to wait 30 minutes for the official to attend to you. Under the same circumstances, it took five minutes for the same query and problem you wanted to resolve two months ago.
After GE14 on May 9 2018, a few days later, I got parking to summon; I rushed out of the bank in Petaling Jaya to talk to the enforcement officer who sternly told me: "You chose the new PH government. You can go and talk to the new PH government to resolve your parking ticket issue," said the disgruntled parking MBPJ enforcement official.
Punishing civil servants will not help. But coaching and training can help in reversing sabotage. Sadly, civil servants voluntarily participated in GE 14 and campaigned for BN.
Currently, more than 1.6 million employees in the Government are divided in ideology, politically and racially. Unfortunately, some tend to work slowly and sabotage their new department heads. For some weird reason, sabotage sets in because their new leaders or department heads are not from their home state, same department or similar political affiliation.
Multiply 1.6 million civil servants by the number of hours of sabotage in their daily working government hours, which can result in billions of Ringgit wasted.
Ms Rita Krishnan, who Trains The Trainer (TTT) under HRDC programme, said more inspiring training in motivation and teamwork of civil servants to be on the same page as the leader can be developed to overcome sabotage at the workplace.
"Civil service will improve and increase its efficiency and productivity if civil servants are trained to follow or be in sync with the leader. At the same time, the leader must also develop leadership qualities to serve the employees. Impact Leadership is about creating a new landscape for the leader and organisation to succeed," Rita told Newswav.
Civil servants must be trained to accept any new government elected by the people despite their political affiliation. The new Government must inculcate a mindset change to accept the new leadership.
How do you tackle the problem of increasing inefficiency? This is the biggest challenge the Anwar Ibrahim government will encounter over the next 4.5 years. Under Anwar Ibrahim's leadership, the PH government also checks malpractices like corruption so that it does not spread like a virus among the civil service.
Has the Government implemented professional training programmes for attitudinal change to increase performance and productivity by civil servants?
The Human Resource Development Corporation (HRDC) can promote more such courses for civil servants. Training programmes must recognise, understand, and overcome such dynamics in devising attitudinal and reverse sabotage. The training needs analysis must explore the psychology behind the sabotage and how to make participants be in sync with the leadership, said Rita who has trained in the area of leadership to ministers in Asia and the Middle East.
For civil service employees to be productive, Rita said: “They must be proactive, not passive, get trained, embrace technology, spend time wisely and follow the leader.”
Elected PH leaders and government heads should be watchful and realign or take stern action to transfer or dismiss employees who fall into the trap of sabotage, inefficiency and corruption.
As a journalist and associate professor, I was once a civil servant. I speak from experience after working for ten years before going to the United States to further my education in journalism. I speak out about the bloated civil service of 1.6 million. I cannot sugar-coat the truth. Truth must be spoken loud and clear to make a difference.
I worked in a government statutory body from 1969 to 1979, and we had to work hard. Civil servants have become compliant, passive, less productive and political today.
Freelance Writer M. Krishnamoorthy (www.imkrishna.net) is a media coach, associate professor and undercover journalist. M. Krishnamoorthy is a media coach, associate professor, and journalist who worked and freelanced with Bernama, NST, The Star, and Malaysiakini. He also freelances as a fixer/coordinator for CNN, BBC, German and Australian Television networks and the New York Times. As an undercover journalist, he has highlighted society's concerns going undercover as a beggar, security guard, blind man, disabled salesman and Member of Parliament.
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