Isnaraissah (fifth right) with civil servants who attended her talk on ‘Nurturing Innovation Culture in Public Service’.
KOTA KINABALU: Sabahans need to increase their productivity in order to catch up with West Malaysia, said Deputy Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Isnaraissah Munirah Majilis.
She said the people often lamented that development in Sabah was 20 or 30 years behind Peninsular Malaysia.
However, Isnaraissah said having buildings like KLCC was not the gauge of the level of progress.
“In order to be on par (with West Malaysia), we need to change our mindset.
“We are in a new era. We cannot catch up with others if we still work at the same speed.”
Similarly, Isnaraissah said civil servants must also increase their productivity and quality of work.
“In doing so, we will be able to catch up and stand on our own two feet in no time,” she said when giving a talk on ‘Nurturing Innovation Culture in Public Service’ organized by Intan Sabah campus here yesterday.
She said the talk aimed to inculcate innovation among civil servants and urged the audience not to be afraid of failure.
Isnaraissah also highlighted some of the programmes implemented by her ministry to promote innovation, including the Malaysia Social Innovation (MySI) programme.
She said the government had allocated RM 5 million for MySI whereby each project would receive a maximum grant of RM 300,000.
“We are targeting about 15 to 20 projects under MySI this year.”
The objective of the programme is to improve the well-being of the community, especially the B40 group, through implementing projects that apply innovative local technology that have been developed and can be carried out sustainably.
She said the MySI was open to members of the public who collaborated with government agencies under any ministry.
Also present was Intan Sabah campus senior training consultant Rozanah binti Abd Hamid.