KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 23 – The Health Ministry needs more staff as its 280,000 workers are insufficient, minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said.
New Straits Times reported him as saying that after nine months in the job, he found a need to increase the number of civil servants in the health sector.
“We really need more workers because of the challenges and burden faced by the existing staff in this sector which is also growing,” Dzulkefly was quoted saying at a press conference in Seremban.
“We have received a number of allocations from the government and we are drawing up plans to increase the staff. We need more, not less.”
Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad reportedly said Thursday that the civil service should be downsized, pointing out that there were only one million civil servants when he first stepped down as PM in 2003, but the bureaucracy is now 1.7 million strong, excluding government-paid staff at “off-budget” entities.
