Our hapless government has displayed yet more evidence about just how out of touch they are with the challenges facing ordinary Malaysians, with the recent announcement of the so-called 11“prudent measures” to curb public sector costs.

Have they just suddenly woke up and realised we have been running a budget deficit since 1999? Apart from the “austerity drive” coming 14 years too late, the savings itself are minuscule and hardly make any difference to the national coffers.

So senior officers will suffer a 5-10 percent cut in their entertainment budgets. Ho-hum. Our government doesn’t require entertainment, since they already entertain the people so well with their clownish antics in Parliament and their “smart” statements in the media.

What they sorely need is education. Cut 100 percent of these frivolous entertainment allowances and force these people to use the National Library for free, where they can actually read something useful on how to manage the country better.

Reduction in toll allowances? I say abolish them, and to go a step further, call back all official cars and issue free, unlimited LRT and bus tickets to these government officers and ministers. Perhaps then, they will understand the public transport woes facing each working Malaysian every day.

Downgrades from business to economy class for travelling via domestic or international flights for our senior government officers are hardly sufficient. We should make them travel on budget carriers such as AirAsia, and force them to loiter at the LCCT instead of the comfortable VIP lounges at KLIA, so they finally understand just how much inconvenience the delay of the new budget terminal has caused us.

Not only they should travel budget, they should also stay in budget accommodation. Don’t worry, we will throw in free Internet.

Reduction of food and drink at government functions sounds so arbitrary. How much reduction? To be clear-cut, ban all catering of food and drinks - each government officer should be issued RM1 so they can “bungkus” their own food from the local mamak stall, thereby demonstrating to Malaysians they can get by with much less like how they always advise us.

Of course, even if the above are adopted, it would not result in any meaningful savings, since these 11 measures are hastily announced to portray some semblance of solidarity from the government in response to the people’s woes in the face of rising living costs.

The real meat lies in the civil servants’ emoluments, which at RM63.6 billion, takes up 30 percent of the operating expenditure in 2014. This portion has been rising year after year in double digits. The government has chosen to turn a blind eye to the nation’s bloated civil service, since these are reliable vote banks. Better and more prudent to cut subsidies and impose GST on 30 million Malaysians than it is to trim and streamline the costs of maintaining 1.2 million civil servants.

So fellow Malaysians, suck it up. The government is not going to tighten its belt for you. You have to do it yourselves.