PUBLIC OR PRIVATE

Since joining the private sector on retirement from the police force early this year, a lot of my friends has asked. How’s life in the private sector? Let me put my answer in writing for posterity. By the way, I am not in the Board of any public listed companies as I retired a superintendent of police and not a director of some police department carrying the rank of Commissioner of Police, like a squad mate of mine. What do I do in the private sector then? What else does a retired middle ranked police or army officer do, if not in the security line, even though I hold an advanced diploma in administrative management from the Institute of Administrative Management, UK.

Long ago I was told that the private sector may pay you more but they also squeezed a lot more out of you. Yes and no. In government service, i.e the police force that I know of, the slackers but kaki bodek seems to have an easy life and goes up the rank every year while those who can do the work but has poor “public relation” skills, does the donkey work and get squeezed tighter and tighter to make the department looks good. So what’s the big deal about being squeezed in the private sector for your bowl of rice. At least, in the private sector, they shoot you while giving you a smile and not a frown. And you also die happy, knowing that slackers like those in PDRM will have a difficult time because there is no macai in the private sector to do what your job description asked you to do.

Any difference between working in the private and the public sector? Same same I guess, as bosses will be bosses irregardless of race, religion or whatever country they come from. They are there to boss you around. Subordinates too are similar in both private and public sector. There will always be some, whose existence in the organisation is to irritate and make your life miserable. So too are collegues. There good ones who thinks of nothing in making you feel at home and there are lousy ones. If there is any difference, it is the lack of or very little bureaucracy in the private sector. Whether they perah you, bosses you around or makes you hot all around, there is one thing good about working in the private sector. They pay you more.

There is however, something that I miss, working in the corporate world. I may be wrong but in the corporate world, it is all about the bottom line. Whatever you do in your official capacity, you are contributing to the final figures in the annual income statement. No such thing as service to the rakyat in the actual honest sense. Even the Corporate Social Responsibility programs looks at how much tax rebate can be derived from such programs.

If you want to be of service to the down and trodden, then public service is for you. The pay may be peanuts but no words can describe the sense of satisfaction that you have, in being able to locate a missing husband or forcing a car to stop and ferry an accident victim to hospital, by using the powers vested in you as a public servant (police officer). I had the opportunity to experience both.

Unfortunately, for the majority in the public sector, the police included, the powers that they have as a government servant is not to make life pleasant and easy for the rakyat but to make money for themselves.

On a final note. I remember a friend telling me once. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. That is why the private sector pays good because they don’t want monkeys running a business organisation except for GLCs (malaysian ones that is) where the pay may be good especially for the top guns but you still have monkeys running GLCs. Me? Thanks to Allah, I have graduated from being a monkey eating peanuts to a homo sapein

Bye!!!.