Malaysia is said to have "one of the highest civil servants to population ratio in the world." According to Public Services Dept, Malaysia had a total of 1,076,761 civil servants in 2010 (Source: 2010 Data from Human Resources Management Information System, PSD). This means we have 1 civil servant for every 26 citizen in Malaysia, or a civil servant to population ratio of 3.8%. PSD does not provide a breakdown of civil servants employed by department / profession type.
Just how bloated is our civil service? It has been widely mentioned in various newspaper articles that we have the same number of civil servants as Japan although Japan has a population of 120mil (*Note: Japan's civil servants number has been put as 1mil, but data is not verifiable. Wikipedia also mentioned the 1mil figure)
A closer examination showed that the Japan's widely quoted 1 mil figure is incorrect. A check with Japan's Statistics Bureau Home Yearbook showed that the country has about 3.3mil public employees (both local and national) in 2008. Unlike Malaysia, teachers, police, fire fighters etc are considered local public employees. Also in Japan, general admin staff working at perfecture- and city-levels are also local public employees and hence, included in the total civil servants tally. I am not sure if our state-level employees (i.e. hired by respective states and not federal government) are included in the 1.1m figure given by PSD although I believe it is not. Based on above numbers, Japan's civil servant to population ratio is about 2.8% vs. Malaysia's 3.8% (Malaysia's ratio could be higher if PSD's figure excludes employees employed by respective states).
Interestingly, the Japanese government has also done a comparison with other developed nations in 2007 -- in the US, the ratio is about 4.6% (based on 2005 data of 13.28m civil servants for 290 mil population) and in the UK, ratio is about 9.3% (based on 2005 data of 5.6m civil servants for population of 60 mil). *** note: for comparison purposes, Malaysia's ratio was about 3.3% in 2005, Japan: 2.9% in 2005 ***
Are we then more efficient than UK and US? Perhaps...again, a closer examination of the data showed that in the UK, they have about 1.6m health personnel vs. our 130,000. This means UK has 27 health personnel for every 1,000 of its citizens whereas we have about 5 health personnel for every 1,000 Malaysians. Also, they have 24 teachers per 1000 people vs. Malaysia's 14 teachers per 1000 people (ideally we should look at teacher: student ratio but number of students in UK in 2005 was not available)
It is hence important that we analyse the breakdown of civil servants by occupation type and compare ratios with that of other developing countries (vs. developed countries which tend to have better health care / education service etc).
To get a rough idea of who forms our 1.1mil civil servants , I have compiled the number of employee data from the various better-known government agencies and summarized them into table below. Note that most of our icvil servants are teachers, armed forces and police personnel as well as doctors and nurses employed in public hospitals/clinics.
Will continue to update table as I get more data.
| Type (civil servants) | Number | Data source |
| Teachers | 408,764 | Jan-2011, Ministry of Education website |
| Armed forces | 134,000 | 2008, World Bank |
| Public health personnel (comprising mainly doctors, nurses and community nurses) | 128,996 | Health Facts 2010, Ministry of Health website |
| Police | 98,747 | Feb-2010, newspaper article quoting Home Minister |
| Prime Minister’s Dept* | 43,544 | 2010, parliamentary reply by Minister in PM’s Dept |
| Fire and Rescue Dept | 12,400 | 2011, newspaper article quoting Housing and Local Government Minister |
| Immigration Dept | 12,168 | 2009, newspaper article quoting Immigration Dept Director-General |
| Royal Malaysian Customs | 12,000 | 2010, newspaper article quoting Customs Dept Director-General |
| Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) | 12,000 | 2011, news article on DBKL unions & CUEPACS |
| Prisons Dept | 10,287 | 2007, newspaper article quoting Internal Security Ministry parliamentary secretary |
| Inland Revenue Board (LHDN) | 10,000 | 2010, presentation by IRB Deputy DG |
| Forestry Dept, Pen Malaysia | 5,403 | 2009, FDPM |
| Dept of Statistics | 3,314 | 2010, DOSM Strategic Plan 2010-2014 |
| National Registration Dept | Over 3,000 | IBM customer profile website |
| Valuation & Property Services Dept (JPPH) | 2,101 | 2011, JPPH website |
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*Includes personal offices of PM and DPM and 45 agencies such as MACC, AG’s office, Election Commission, Human Rights Commission, Public Complaints Bureau etc.
And table below shows how our number of civil servants has increased over the years:
| 2006 | 894,901 |
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| 2007 | 943,927 | + 5.5% |
| 2008 | 1,003,152 | + 6.3% |
| 2009 | 1,053,938 | + 5.1% |
| 2010 | 1,076,761 | + 2.2% |
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Source: HRMIS, Public Service Dept.
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