Better Being a Malaysian Government Servant

As worldwide property markets are slowing down, particularly in USA and England and some parts of Europe, the Malaysian property market is still trumping high.

The Malaysian property market has seen a record buy by the YTL Group for a piece of land at Jalan Stonor, near the remarkable Petronas Twin Towers. The piece of land measuring only 0.4 hectare fetched a price of RM2,000 per square feet.

At the same time, the Malaysian government is making the housing allocation for their staff an envy throughout the whole world. Much envy even for Malaysians too.

Government servants will get to enjoy housing allocation of around RM5.8 billion (US$1.8 billion) for a total 23,000 units of staff quarters. The government staff working in the Putrajaya government administrative capital area would get to enjoy such accommodation in stages till year 2010.

Let's break it down in details:-
RM5,800,000,000 divided by 23,000 units = RM252,174 per unit.

Many people working in the private sector could only dream about such accommodation at this value.

That's the value for each unit that the government will provide for at least 23,000 families. First of all, are there 23,000 government staff working at the Putrajaya government administrative capital area?

That could be the total workforce and irrespective of rankings, each staff would get such a huge allocation? And the government was telling the public to change our lifestyle (to a more modest one) since cost of living was getting out of control. Was this expenditure justified?

Or was the government given an invoice which has been hiked up without knowing the actual costs behind it or the government was so lousy in negotiating for a good price or blatantly allowing such expenditure even though it was at sky high prices?

And this was only in Putrajaya. Wait till the government annouces for the rest of the government workforce throughout the country. Estimated workforce, if not mistaken, was around 900,000. If we follow the average unit price, it would cost the government - 900,000 x RM252,174 = RM226,956,600,000.00.

In case your eyes can't read the many zeros, it's RM226.9 billion.
Tags: Malaysian Government Servant, Putrajaya, Malaysian Property Market, YTL Group, Jalan Stonor, Petronas Twin Towers