PUTRAJAYA: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the government’s policy now was placing importance on value management in carrying out the nation’s agenda.
The prime minister said value management needed to be applied in managing all government projects right from the initial stage and should be a management tool to obtain value for money spent.
“We should question ourselves whether there are better methods of doing things to get optimum returns for government expenditure.
“There have been many instances where a portion of the government’s expenditure allocation was saved through value management.
This should encompass pre and post project implementation and choice of locations, reengineering and designing to the choosing of suitable building materials.”
Najib said this at the 12th Public Service Premier Gathering held at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre, here, yesterday.
Also present were Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and chief secretary to the government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan. Najib said during his recent visit to Sarawak, he noted that the approach of implementing high-impact projects with reasonable costs was successfully used in solving residents’ problems.
For example, he said, the link road in Ba’kelalan if implemented the usual way would require an allocation of RM400 million, but it was built at a cost of only RM50 million.
“This is because the project was implemented under the ‘Jiwa Murni’ programme of the Malaysian Army Engineer Corps, using manpower from the corps and the allocation spent only on buying building materials and rental on machinery.
“What is important is that a service or project must be tailored accordingly to fulfill the needs of the local community without compromising standards and quality and that the community benefit from the service or project fast.”
The prime minister said besides the “Excellent Service Award”, the government planned to introduce a special award in recognition of civil servants who not only produced high quality work but were also active in voluntary service, community work, sports and culture which brought glory to the organisation, society and nation.
For that, he said, their work performance and active involvement in the mentioned activities throughout 2011 would be evaluated.
Najib said to erase the perception that the civil service now was rather huge, the government needed to create a lean civil service but highly capable and efficient to provide excellent service.
He said in line with the Government Transformation Programme towards providing quality public service, a thorough study would be done on the rationalisation of public service.
This was aimed at reducing excess manpower through streamlining of overlapping functions of government agencies, better control over filling of vacancies, abolishment of certain posts, and redistribution of personnel to the more critical agencies, he said.
For officers with poo rperformance record or problems adapting to the work or post, including those at the top management level, Najib said an “exit” policy would be created under the Malaysia Remuneration System (SSM) review to terminate the services of such officers.
Najib then launched a book written by him entitled, “Perkhidmatan Awam: Meneraju Perubahan – Melangkau Jangkaan” (“Public Service: Spearheading Change – Exceeding Expectations”).
The book, the third written by the prime minister, is published by the Razak School of Government the National Translation Institute of Malaysia.
It is dedicated to all public servants nationwide to spur them to help realise the Government Transformation Programme towards achieving Vision 2020. — Bernama