Take a look at the comments to Jeff Ooi’s posting (20 Apr 05) on a possible Malaysian cabinet re-shuffle. There was a long comment regarding the alleged Malaysian Civil Service. That part of the comment about the employability of retired civil servants reminds me of one such person. He was a very senior civil servant who on retirement went on to pretend to serve on the board of a listed company. That listed company had just been taken over by the ministry of finance, who was in the process of injecting a public service/amenity into that listed company, to “privatize” it. He commented that that was a brilliant proposal for that company, as that public service/amenity is a potential goldmine. It would be easy, he suggested, to increase profit margins astronomically. After all, he quipped, the costs of printing a 20 sen stamp would be the same as for a RM100 one (gee, did I just give away the identity of that public service/amenity?). Those of us sitting in the boardroom (who aren’t directors) just tried very hard not to drop our jaws/ROTFLOL. Of course, the months after that was a nightmare for us. I left the company a few months later, not being able to absorb all those brilliant ideas. True Malaysian that I was, I sometimes asked myself if it would have been worth the while just to remain in that company and earn buta money/salary. I am glad I left.
Ante 