Recruitment of civil servants won’t be based on gender, colour and creed

PUTRAJAYA: The Government will be “blind” to gender, colour and creed when it comes to recruiting civil servants.

This is the assurance given by the Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, who said the plan was to attract the best to work in the public sector.

“We are determined to improve ethnic diversity in the public service through recruitment and career development programmes. Our target is to employ the best,” he told the media during a special briefing yesterday.

“This is part of our commitment to ensure that the public gets the best service from its public sector, where the delivery system runs efficiently and effectively.”

Sidek also said poverty eradication was among the tasks the Government had set to tackle this year, adding that programmes and initiatives had been put in place to support the task.

He said poverty eradication was one of the foremost commitments of the Government.

“We have even developed an in-house programme, E-Kaseh, that will track this initiative,” he said.

He added that the issue would also be addressed through providing more employment and educational opportunities.

“We will also ensure that there is room for everyone to participate in the creation of wealth,” he said, adding that the Government would increase the use of technology in efforts to improve the public delivery system.

Among the key initiatives are the establishment of BLESS (Business Licensing Electronic Support System, a one-stop portal for the application of business licences) while E-payment will be expanded to cover a wide array of government transactions through Internet banking and credit card payment.

The setting of E-Perolehan will ease procurement and payment to contractors while E-Khidmat will facilitate online payment of summonses, drivers’ licence applications, bill and assessment charge payments, queries on the status of insolvency and the closing of businesses.

“To maintain a culture of performance, accountability and transparency, public service delivery standards will be assessed and linked to published performance indices which will be audited periodically,” Sidek said.

“We will implement service delivery standards across ministries and local authorities with performance measured through key performance index, monitor and enforce delivery standards.”

He added that significant achievements were recorded by the public sector last year, the most noted being the aim to ensure payment of invoices, for staff or service providers, were made within 14 days.

He said that last December, 96.9% of payments by ministries and agencies, amounting to RM8.455bil, were made within 14 days, of which 70.4% of payments were made within seven days.

Other initiatives introduced by the Government last year include the establishment of Pemudah, a partnership with representatives from the public and private sectors to enhance the public delivery system for ease of doing business, tax refunds by the Inland Revenue Board within 30 days, passport renewal and new application approval within two to 24 hours and one-stop centres at local authorities.