Govt to improve ethnic diversity in public service

The Star

By MAZWIN NIK ANIS

PUTRAJAYA: The Government will be "blind" to gender, colour and creed when it comes to recruiting civil servants.

That is the assurance given by Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan who said the plan was to attract the best to work in the public sector.

"We are determined to improve ethnic diversity in the public service through recruitment and career development programmes. Our target is to employ the best and the rest speaks for itself.

"This is part of our commitment to ensure the public gets the best service from its public sector, where the public delivery system runs efficiently and effectively," he told the media in a special briefing Wednesday.

Sidek also said poverty was among six tasks the Government had set to tackle this year, adding programmes and initiatives, ranging from grants, counselling and employment plans, have been put in place to support the task.

He said poverty eradication was one of the paramount and foremost commitments of the Government, where the target was to eradicate poverty by 2010 and reducing by half the current rates of poverty.

"We have even developed an in-house programme, E-Kaseh that will track this initiative. The public service will develop frequent public reporting to update the public of this task to ensure targets are met," he added.