Reward System in the Works

I came across the by-line in an English daily today after my good friend Nik Mahmood who had also retired as Director of the Mechanical Engineering Division with the JKR many years ago mentioned to me this morning about what the PM said in the monthly gathering of all the departments under his charge in Putrajaya. The report in the daily said that the Government is considering a reward system to encourage performance in public administration which will be different from the "vertical and horizontal" system which is not working. He is quoted by the daily, " It will be a system that is effective and will motivate civil servants not only to perform but to perform excellently."

The PM must be to all intent and purpose referring to the Sistem Saraan Malaysia or SSM which had been introduced to replace the SSB which was the remuneration system for the public service of the federal government and the respective public service of the State Governments in Malaysia. CUEPACS which is the umbrella organisation of the various unions of government employees had been calling for its abolition many years ago because of the exam-oriented evaluation of efficiency apart from the annual assessments made on each individual employees for the movement in salaries and also promotions which was supposed to be performance driven.

Since it is only at the thinking stage, therefore it would be interesting what would be the new reward system that will motivate public servants to perform with excellence.

In my view, whatever system that would replace the SSM, it should not be a carry over of the present one which is claimed by the unions as being stultifying to many in the lower categories due to the many impediments such as competency level examinations and the unfair evaluations given by Departmental Committees in giving the salary increments whether "diagonal", "Vertical" or " Horizontal" in accordance to the scores which are of course highly subjective.

In reality many in the public service such as those in the teaching profession and other closed schemes of service in areas such as medical and health, public works, agriculture, security, customs and a host of revenue generating schemes of service had expressed their long dissatisfaction over the reward system which they claimed as being lopsided.

To be fair to all sides it is high time for another Royal Commission on Remuneration for the Public Service to be established to look into the critical areas of dissatisfaction and the proposal to fix the problem once and for all. The last Royal Commission appointed to look into the remuneration of the public service of the Federation was the Ibrahim Ali Commission whose recommendations were rejected by the Government. The present remuneration system is mostly devised by the Public Services Department with no wider inputs although the Cabinet Committee on Salaries deliberated and approved it.

Furthermore whatever system that is going to be adopted by the government, the key to excellence is on the leadership at all levels of the organisation at the Federal, State and Local Authorities. There must be a clear line of responsibility as who should be accountable on performance or non-performance. The boundary between what is administrative and what is politics must be made as clear as daylight and there should not be any overlapping of functions and role between politicians and public servants. The rules and procedures which had been in place to ensure proper checks and balance must be reinforced and maintained without any compromise. If the top echelons in the public service are unable to perform their duties and responsibilities without fear or favour and putting personal interests above the public interests, than no matter which system is applied to enhance performance to the highest level will just be an exercise in futility.