Welcome Rakan Sarawak February 2003

Rangkaian Khidmat Awam Negeri Sarawak

A MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT OF RAKAN SARAWAK BULLETIN

(People, events, activities and programmes which make for a total quality-managed Sarawak Civil Service)

ISSN 1394-5726

Online Publisher:

Contents provided by:

An extract of YAB the Chief Minister’s speech:

…“Sarawak will see a metamorphosis or a transformation of its Civil Service organization before the year 2013. This change is focused on the structure of the economy, the government, and inevitably, the introduction of advanced technology in the workplace.

The Civil Service must be able to adapt to change where the staff should no longer regard themselves as being isolated or independent from others. Civil servants have to adapt and accept change that is taking place in other sectors, mainly the private sector.

The public sector cannot feel that they can cruise on their own steam. After more than 40 years with the second generation of Civil Servants the public sector is no longer the ‘biggest’ employer anymore. That may be the case many years ago, but that is no longer true today.

The role of the Civil Service today has to change compared to yesteryears when it dealt mainly with the general public. Today, we have to take account of the increasingly important role played by the private sector in determining the growth of our country. Thus, in view of the change in the structure of the Civil Service, the government felt that the size of the Civil Service organisation will be reduced.

This metamorphosis is unavoidable. With the country’s rapid development in all sectors, a restructuring of the Civil Service will follow suit. We have to do this because we want to see our civil servants becoming more professional and with the help of ICT, we will need specific people to do specific tasks. The State’s intranet, SarawakNet will be able to provide us with the necessary tool to carry us along our journey towards transformation.

Within the next 10 years, the process of assimilation in the Civil Service would be through the newly-implemented ‘e-recruitment’ process. Through this process, which will be introduced this year, recruitment of civil servants will be based on knowledge, skills, and ability of the applicant. In this way, we will be able to recruit the best man for the job, based not merely on his or her sheer basic knowledge, but also on other criteria such as the ability to communicate well and be able to handle ‘crisis management’.

Academic qualification is one thing, but in future, the interviewers will have to make sure that the person applying for the position has the relevant knowledge and skills in that particular field. Apart from all these, the applicant’s personal attitude is of course no less important in order to become an efficient and competent civil servant.

The change in the composition of the State Civil Service is inevitable, as the economy is more towards private-sector driven. In this context, the Civil Service will have to be staffed by those who are knowledgeable and friendly to the private sector. And they will have to think and act professionally.

The changes that are expected of the Civil Service concern its organization, quantity and most important of all, quality. Today, the Civil Service is undergoing gradual changes as most of the trivial tasks in the public sector had been ‘farmed out’ to the private sector.

The present ‘pyramid’ system in the Civil Service would soon be outdated, as most of the jobs will be privatized. This is clearly evident from works being tendered out to private contractors by the Public Works Department (JKR)….

There are certain jobs that can be better carried out by individual contractors such as maintenance work simply because the harder they work, the more they will get in return and the higher their profit.

Unfortunately, there are times when the governments’ cor-poratisation exercise does not work out to its full advantage because some of the workers are not willing to slog in and work real hard! This is seen as a negative attitude on the part of the workers because in a changing and challenging world that we live in today, nothing comes easy, even for civil servants when it comes to a restructuring exercise.

My advise to all concerned is that if you want to remain secure in your position you must be prepared to continue to upgrade yourselves to face a future globalised world which is both challenging and uncertain.

Globalisation will carry with it a set of rules which, whether we like it or not, will determine how we conduct ourselves in the international borderless arena. The success or failure of our venture will be determined by how much and how fast we can adapt to a demanding future.”