QUEST FOR EXCELLENCE SHOULD BE MADE PART OF TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

PUTRAJAYA, Oct 1 (Bernama) -- Members of the civil service should strive for
excellence and make high achievement a culture in the efforts to transform the
public sector, national historian Prof Emeritus Dr Khoo Kay Kim said.

He also called on civil servants to discard apathy towards excellence as
this could affect the quality of the public sector.

Prof Khoo said that if integrity was not internalised as a culture, any
effort to inculcate excellence in the public service would achieve little
success.


He also said that there were weaknesses in the country's education system at
the moment mainly because teachers were not chosen carefully.

"Malaya was once known in the field of education but now we are faced with
many problems," he said at a panel discussion themed "Integrity as the Basis for
Public Sector Transformation" organised by the Malaysian Administrative
Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) here Thursday.

Stressing that teachers should always give priority to students, he said,
teachers should also instill noble values among students.

"Teachers and schools should play their roles to change the mindset of the
young generations. If schools do not play their role, we cannot create a society
that has integrity because integrity should start in school," he added.

Meanwhile Mampu deputy director-general Abdul Rahim Md Noor said Mampu was
drawing up plans to transform the public sector into a world-class entity by
2015.

"We have to transform the whole mindset of the civil servants and the work
culture to position them a cut above the rest," he said.

He also said that Mampu would propose that Putrajaya be turned into "a city
of integrity" and be an example of other cities.

"I want to see a situation where if I lose my wallet in Putrajaya, I will
have it returned to me without missing a single sen, like when I lost my wallet
while I was in Japan," he said.
-- BERNAMA