“In Malaysia there are 1.4 million civil servants in 28 schemes of service under the Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam or the Public Services Department. They include the federal public service, the state public services, the joint public services, the education service, the judiciary, the legal service, the police and armed forces...”

Idris Jala, ‘Transforming public service delivery’, Jan 27, 2014.

COMMENT In his article , the CEO of Pemandu made the case that the 1.4 million strong civil service was not bloated although he conceded that it needed to improve service delivery.

Firstly, there is no denying that we have a civil service to population ratio that is the highest in the region.

The 2011 UN Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific (Unescap) had noted that Malaysia has the largest civil service in the region with a civil servant to population ratio of 4.68, compared to Indonesia's 1.79, South Korea's 1.85 and Thailand's 2.06. Since then, we have added another several hundred thousand civil servants to the national payroll...