Drying Government?

I’m rather curious with the recent decisions made by our government. As a result of the rising fuel prices, I had predicted that the government would raise the pay of the civil service, which would then force the private sector to follow suit, leading to a pay inflation in Malaysia. However, the government seems to have decided not to do that.

Instead, the government is now encouraging civil servants to seek employment outside the civil service to supplement their income. This is contrary to the General Orders of the civil service. All this time, it is general knowledge that although the GO exists, the government wouldn’t take any action against it’s employees. However, this time around, things are slightly different as the government is openly encouraging it’s employees to contravene the GO.

The idea of encouraging civil servants to get second jobs or start small businesses is only a very short term stop-gap measure. Assuming that the economy gets worse, then what? The civil servants are not immune from the effects of an ailing economy. With a limited economy, there are only so many things that you can sell, and so many part time jobs available. Assuming that the economy gets better, then what? Force all the civil servants to abandon their successful sources of secondary income in order to adhere to the GO? That would just be unfair to the civil servants who have put in an effort to make their little businesses work.

Then, there has also been recent suggestions by the government to pay it’s employees twice a month, instead of monthly. The excuse is that this will help the civil servants manage their expenses better by only releasing their pay packets, half a month at a time. This doesn’t make any sense to me as everything else is synchronised to a monthly pay cycle. So, bills will still need to be paid at the end of the month, with only half the pay packet in the bank.

What this silly idea suggests to me is that the government may be having some cash flow problems, which worries me. As usual, I think that our present government has gone bonkers. They are not thinking things through and only taking the short view. Maybe they don’t feel that they will be in power very much longer, and will leave the cleaning up to whomever takes over after. If that is true, it’s a rather sad situation for the rest of us to be in.

PS: I am not an economist nor a politician.