Today's headline : " GOVERNMENT WANTS TO RAISE PRODUCTIVITY."
"The government wants to cut down on the number of 'extra' public holidays at national and state level to improve the nation's productivity and enhance the delivery system," so says a Minister.
THE STAR 23 June 2007
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This is a classic example of a Minister blurting something that does not make sense.
In Economic, "Productivity" is defined as "The rate at which goods or services are produced, especially measured by output per unit of labour."
There are 14 national gazetted public holidays and on the average of another 3 per state. If some of the holidays are abolished and production does not go up, the new productivity rate may go down ! It would be more logical for the government to find out how to increase production with the present working days, which will definitely increase the productivity rate.
Quality of life is an important motivating factor to increase productivity. That's why many nations have only 5 working days per week.
In a survey of a multi-national company, the results are as follow:
Nation # of work days
Malaysia 268 days
Taiwan 254 days
Thailand 247 days
Indonesia 247 days
Japan 242 days
Whereas holidays in Malaysia are normally linked consecutively to the most for 3 days, including Saturday and Sunday, Thailand sometime have holidays linked consecutively for more than 4 days.
Japanese companies normally observed linked holidays for average of 9 days! There is the New Year Holidays in Dec/Jan stretching for 10 days; the so called Golden Holidays in Apr/May stretching for 9 days and the Summer Holidays ( phew! How nice if Malaysia has Summer Holidays which will be all year round) stretching for 11 days!
Please tell me whether our government should maintain the present number of holidays or increase the number of holidays/ non-working days in order to increase productivity, or do you have other ideas?
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The GLCs and Govt sectors must be revamped and taught the real meaning of productivity. Productivity is not computed as output per days or output per person but rather as per man-days or better still, as per man-hours. Therefore, reducing the number of holidays ( and so increase the man-days) may increase the output in terms of quantity but does not necessary means the output will be increased proportionately or more.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the new output per man-days may be reduced if the mindset is not improved.
The Govt has just announced the salary increase. Let us wait for the next productivity figure from the Dept of Statistics.
I say, leave the status quo alone.
Hey, whatever happened to the proposal to reduce the number of holidays? Maybe somebody discovered his folly or some civil servants gave the proposer some hard knocks on his head for the suggestion because it means civil servants will suffer most!!
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