A day before Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced his new cabinet line-up, he spoke to civil servants in the country, reminding them that they must not be complacent and should continue to excel.

We can see from the PM’s speech while announcing the cabinet reshuffle that he has very high expectations from the new cabinet and will focus on improving the country’s economy, education and healthcare, as well as fighting corruption and poor civil service efficiency.

Talking about economy, Anwar has appointed a non-politician, former EPF chief executive Amir Hamzah Azizan, as finance minister II in hope of banking on his expertise to expedite economic growth. A non-politician’s status can exempt him from unnecessary political intervention so that he can focus on boosting the national economy.

Nevertheless, economy is not something that can be achieved with a single individual’s effort. We therefore propose the establishment of a “financial development committee”  that will pool together the expertise from all entities related to economic development and fiscal management, including also investment, manufacturing, transportation, engineering, food security, technology, higher education and Bank Negara.

To improve the country’s healthcare service quality has always been a priority of PM Anwar. Before tabling the 2024 Budget, he had on several occasions declared his determination to boost the country’s healthcare service quality while closing the urban-rural gap. He set aside RM41.2 billion in the 2024 Budget for healthcare allocations, or 13.5% higher than the RM36.3 billion set aside in this year’s Budget.

Financial allocation alone is not enough, as we need capable people to lead the health portfolio. That’s why Anwar has brought back the experienced former health minister Dr. Dzulkefly Ahmad.

There’s no shortage of general practitioners in the country at this moment, but we severely lack sophisticated medical equipment (especially in rural areas) as well as specialist doctors.

According to Institute for Medical Research data three years ago, Malaysia only had an average of 3.9 specialist doctors for every 10,000 people, far lower than the 14.3 for OECD countries in 2018.

To lift the ratio of specialist doctors to OECD level and life expectancy will be a major challenge for Zulkefly.

Malaysia ranked 63rd in life expectancy in 2020 at 76 years, while neighbouring Singapore ranked fourth at 83.7 years.

Shouldn’t the newly minted health minister identify his ministry’s KPIs first? Of course, he is still facing mounting challenges from a returning Covid-19.

PM Anwar, and Malaysians in general, have very high expectations from the new cabinet.

As for education, of the total budgetary allocation of RM393.8 billion, education gets the lion’s share at RM58.7 billion, 6.4% higher than this year’s RM55.2 billion.

According to the latest triennial PISA ( Programme for International Student Assessment) survey, the performance of 15-year-old Malaysian students in science, mathematics and reading is poor among the 81 countries assessed, and this reflects badly on the country’s future human resource competitiveness.

Perhaps the education ministry should identify the root of problems in teacher competency, curriculum, classroom duration, students’ learning attitude, family care, lack of education resources, etc.

We have many ambitious and far-sighted projects such as AI, high technology and EV; have split the communications and digital ministry into two; and have even played host to co-founder of global AI chip leader Nvidia, Jensen Huang. All these have highlighted the government’s ambition in industrial transformation. The question is: where are our talented people?

The higher education ministry should groom the talent needed for industrial transformation, or we won’t go far from here even with the most ambitious plans.

Corruption has been highly detrimental to the country’s development. For 1MDB case alone, the government will have to settle as much as RM24.53 billion of debts over the past six years, enough to build an entire KLIA, 45% of ECRL and 25% of HSR, and we haven’t even finished paying yet!

To battle corruption, Anwar has instructed the establishment of a special task force to expedite procurement approval for defence  ministry.

As a matter of fact, we have talked too much about the need for transparency in government tenders and procurement, and hope similar task forces can be set up in every government department.

In the meantime, the PM has also urged the country’s civil servants to abandon their culture of complacency and pursue excellence instead.

Poor civil service efficiency has been a chronic issue in this country. Of the unprecedented RM393.8 billion allocation for the 2024 Budget, RM303.8 billion has been allocated for operating expenditure, with only RM90 billion for development expenditure.

A big chunk of the operating expenditure will be used to pay for the remunerations, perks and pensions for some 1.7 million civil servants.