Umno deputy chief Khairy has asked Tony Pua to apologise for the latter remark that the government sector is a dumping ground for bumiputera graduates.

Pua told Malaysiakini that his statement was “taken out of context” by Khairy.

He explained that he was merely “questioning the government’s policies” and that his statements “were not meant to insult civil servants”.

It is a fact that Malaysia has the largest civil service in Asean. Although in term of population size, we are in the middle range but we beat Indonesia and Philippines in term of the percentage of civil servants to population.

We have a bigger service compared to Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Malaysia has 1.2 million civil servants and this represents 4.6% of our 26 million populations. Singapore has 61,000 civil servants out of the 4 million populations. (1.5%) Hong Kong has 160,000 out of a population of 7 million. (2.3%)

Taiwan which has a population size of 23 million, (about the same size as Malaysia) is only served by 528,000. That is 2.3% of their population.

We should be asking why we still have such a big civil service, especially after embracing the privatization programme. Instead of a smaller civil service, the contrary is true.

Tony Pua may have a valid point.

As least, we know Khairy is among the 20,000 (Zam’s figure) who read political blog and internet news. For a quick view of Tony Pua’s response, Khairy may have to read Tony’s blog.