Rather than just slashing salaries of ministers, an economist has suggested for the government’s overall size to be reduced to further bring down its operations cost.

Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) CEO Wan Saiful Wan Jan said he agreed in principle that salaries of ministers ought to be slashed, given the current economic climate.

“I think the most important point from the economist’s suggestion is for ministers to show the public that they also share the difficulties of ordinary people.

“I generally agree with that principle but my way of doing it would be more flexible than just slashing salaries,” Wan Saiful told Malaysiakini.

Among others, he cited reducing income tax and GST as alternative means to show the government’s concern for the rakyat’s hardship.

“That (reducing taxes) will have the most direct impact.

“Or the other way would be to reduce the overall size of government and cut down on operational costs,” he said when asked to comment on economist Muhammed Abdul Khalid’s reported proposal during a forum organised by the DAP-linked think tank Research for Social Advancement (Refsa) in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Commenting further, Wan Saiful said pushing for overall higher wages would not help in the current challenging times, as somebody would have to pay for the additional costs.

“The government will have to raise the money from somewhere, normally through increased taxation. Everybody would then be worse off.

“So, it would be better to reduce the size of the government and reduce the overall operations cost,” he stressed.

After three reshuffles, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s cabinet remains the largest in Malaysian history, with 35 ministers and 33 deputy ministers.

Centre to Combat Cronyism and Corruption (C4) executive director Cynthia Gabriel, meanwhile, said it is high time that ministers are made to share the people’s plight.

“I think it is a brilliant proposal. It is high time that they also feel the rakyat’s hardship, because the costs of everything is going up,” she said when contacted.

At the same time, Gabriel also raised concerns over the upcoming Budget 2017 to be tabled in Parliament on Friday.

She said there had been a lack of tracking mechanism on government expenditures, to ensure allocations were not misused or sidetracked for “dodgy activities” and personal gains.

“What we need is a more real-time tracking of government expenditures, given that the flow of money in and out of the country now is so easy,” she said in reference to several ongoing investigations of high-profile alleged money-laundering activities involving federal funds.

Transparency-International Malaysia (TI-M) president Akhbar Satar also said that preventing mismanagement of the economy would be the best way to combat leakages in spendings.

“At the end of the day we should ask politicians to work for the people, especially given the current challenging economic times.

“We know there are politicians who are working for themselves. So they must be sincere.”