Government has no plans to reduce number of civil servants - Najib

The prime minister said the government was not like the opposition which proposed to get rid of half of the civil servants or reduce the size of the civil service when in power.

"The government of today does not have any such proposals. We have to understand this...we are definitely considerate," he said when launching the Civil Service Labour day celebration at Wawasan Hall, Thursday. However the government needed to consider numerous factors in meeting the requests of the civil servants based on the government's ability.

Meanwhile the prime minister said civil servants needed to accept the reality that the requirement of the times changed very quickly.

He said five principles or criteria were needed for the civil servants to embrace change and move forward in the next 50 years.

"The first criteria, knowledgeable. Civil servants need to ensure they are constantly knowledgeable, creative, innovative and able to be a model figure to the community," he said.

"Second criteria, reliablity. It includes sincerity, trust, integrity and trustworthiness as well as having universal values that can be trusted by the community," he said.

Najib said the third criteria was best work practise that reflected the authority of civil servants.

"Fourth criteria, patriotic spirit. Fifth criteria, a success culture that is outcome based. This is important to raise quality of work based on the key performance index (KPI)," he said.

The prime minister also announced that the federal government had agreed to implement the construction of 1,000 unit of houses for the state civil servants in Kedah in Bukit Pinang, Pokok Sena besides adding 20 units of haemodialysis machines to ease the shortage in the hospital in Alor Setar. Also present were Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Tun Mahathir, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim, Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Dr Ali Hamsa, Public Service Department Director-General Tan Sr Mohamad Zabidi Zainal and Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) President Azih Muda.

At the function, Najib presented five awards in conjunction with the Civil Service Labour Day celebration 2014.

The Exemplary Award in the Cuepacs category was won by Pahang Cu epacs, which was received by its Chairman, Kamarulzaman Abdul Razak while the Excellent Union Award went to Malaysian Nurses Union (MNU).

The Caring Employer Award for federal departments was won by the police, which was represented by Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar while Mara, which was represented by its Director-General Datuk Ibrahim Ahmad, won in the statutory bodies/local authorities category.

Ali Hamsa was selected for the Special Award 2014.