Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on May 17, 2018

PUTRAJAYA: The new government has begun to lay off civil servants who are political appointees as part of the efforts to downsize the civil service, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said.

“There are 17,000 people who are political appointees. We have to sort this out. We want to reduce government expenditure, so some contracted officers were affected. In the former government, there were some given administration work as usual, but there were also political appointees.

“Some [civil servants’] salaries are low. They might need the job for survival. We will give them other positions,” he said.

On the Anti-Fake News Act, Dr Mahathir said the legislation needed to be studied before a decision was made on repealing it.

“We will have a Parliament sitting as soon as possible, so that we can work on laws that we need to repeal,” he said.

On petrol prices, Dr Mahathir said the retail prices would remain the same for the moment, and the government would provide a subsidy if the market price climbed.

 

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