The Selangor select committee on local government will look into the Petaling Jaya City Council’s (MBPJ) decision to award a three months’ bonus to its employees.

Bukit Gasing state assemblyperson Rajiv Rishyakaran, who is a member of the select committee, said rewarding staff should be done with a stringent assessment of their performance.

“While I am not against bonuses as a means of rewarding or incentivising council staff, it should be done together with a stringent and transparent assessment of their performance and key performance indicators (KPIs),” he said in a statement today.

Rajiv ( right ) said public perception of the performance of the council and its officers must first be taken into account before such incentives were to be given out.

Admitting that although MBPJ may be one of the better performing local councils, much still needed to be done for it to further improve.

The DAP assemblyperson said the select committee, which comprises of seven Selangor assemblypersons and is chaired by Ijok assemblyperson Dr Idris Ahmad, will look into the mechanisms on which the employee evaluations are done.

“We will look into how is it that over 90 percent of the employees in MBPJ have scored so well, to be rated above 80 percent.

“This will also include the necessary check and balances to ensure that favouritism does not become the key-determining factor in the evaluation, but true performance.”

He further stressed that an analysis must be done as to how the aspirations of MBPJ as well as other local councils, were to further improve itself is translated into the right KPIs for its employees.

“We also need to take into account the financial position of all 12 local councils within Selangor, so that the rewarding mechanism is to some extent consistent, not to dishearten the employees in councils with lower revenue.

MBPJ had voted to award the three months’ bonus to its employees during a full board meeting on Friday.

The vote at the closed-door meeting, however, was not unanimous, with 11 councillors for and eight against the decision, The Star had reported.