Power of Public Servants

Public Servants can develop policies and send to the Treasury for consideration and if approved the Government would need to allocate funds to enforce these policies. When I worked in the Ministry of HR the Deputy Minister Padmanaban said the Government is to table its budget and he noted the estates were being left out of the budget and urged me to see what the Labour Department can do to rectify the situation. Officers could draw up public policies that can improve the quality of life of target groups. I wrote a short paragraph for the following year’s Malaysia Plan that the Government will undertake to facilitate the estate communities to have access to electricity and potable water drawn from public sources and assistance to crèches in estates where there were more than 10 children who were housed in the estate crèches even though estates were located on private properties. I wrote a paragraph that would commit the Government to provide assistance to estates to provide electricity and water supplies and crèche assistance to estates though they were private properties. My draft policy was accepted and it became part of the Malaysia Plan for the following year. Government was committed to provide assistance to estates that had a resident population which was largely Indian then. Electricity and water supplies began to be provided to estates communities. Before this estate owners were urged to provide such benefits that was dependent on the employer’s generosity. A new dawn arose but unfortunately the rubber estates gave way to Oil Palm estates. The Indians did not like working in Oil Palm estates Bangladeshis and Indonesians were imported while the Indian estate force was pushed out to the fringes of towns to become squatters where they were languishing in squalor and hoping for jobs in towns. Some succeeded in social mobility while the vast majority were disoriented and became victims of joblessness and illicit Samsu .