The round-the-clock struggle of Macau’s health care workers, law enforcement officers and other government employees against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has given a big boost to the image of our civil service, the Health Bureau in particular, apart from potentially saving countless lives.
All those involved in the local authorities’ battle against the highly infectious virus have shown that Macau’s civil servants can indeed be diligent, competent and efficient, adjectives rarely heard when locals discussed the city’s civil service before the COVID-19 crisis erupted.
Many locals used to regard our civil servants as an overpaid and underworked bunch of red-tape bureaucrats gratuitously making citizens’ lives even more difficult than it already is – and they also circulated the macabre joke that while the private Kiang Wu Hospital was taking one’s money (due to its perceived greed) the public Conde de S. Januário Hospital Centre was taking one’s life (due to the perceived failure to save its patients).
According to an age-old saying, there is a grain of truth in every joke, but jokes also tend to over generalise. I have only limited first-hand experience of treatments at Macau’s two main hospitals (touch wood), but it has been positive for me – at Kiang Wu for a broken toe and a bad cold, and at the Conde de S. Januário for a broken arm (resulting from a classic accident affecting journalists – I tripped over a waste paper basket in our editorial office) and a urology check-up. All the doctors were friendly, competent and efficient.
If there is anything good that came out of the COVID-19 case locally it is that our civil service has been able to show it mettle. I am proud of our health care workers, police officer and firefighters (the Fire Service Bureau is responsible for all emergency assistance work which includes a well-trained ambulance team) who have tackled our novel coronavirus crisis remarkably well. As a matter of fact, the international media have taken notice of Macau’s success in stemming the threat of the novel coronavirus. We have become a model for the world on the anti-COVID-19 front!
Non-pecuniary rewards
Some local community leaders have urged the government to grant all those in the fight against COVID-19 financial rewards for their hard work, frontline workers in particular. While I do agree that they should be rewarded for their virtuous endeavours, I also believe that right now the well-earned rewards should not be of a pecuniary nature, considering that many (if not most) in the private sector – businesspeople, employees and the self-employed – are facing precarious revenue and income situations and even financial ruin and unemployment. Besides, Macau’s civil servants enjoy employment conditions and fringe benefits that are much better than those in the private sector.
However, there are non-pecuniary rewards that the government could offer our COVID-19 fighters such as flexitime and time off once the crisis is over. I also expect some of our unsung heroes on the anti-coronavirus front to be on the government’s next Honours List. I am sure they deserve it.
Anyway, the civil service plays an important role in Macau’s local labour market.
According to official statistics, there are some 32,000 government employees, around 38 percent of them permanent civil servants. Civil servants account for around 8 percent of Macau’s total labour force. Some 35 percent of government employees work for the public security portfolio and 28 percent for social affairs and culture. The government is the city’s top employer.
Civil servants’ fringe benefits are something that their counterparts in the private sector can only dream of. And, most importantly, most government employees, not just permanent civil servants, enjoy job safety, something that due to the inherently volatile nature of its business operations the private sector is unable to guarantee.
All these are factors that the government needs to take into account when weighing up the starkly different conditions and interests of the various sectors of our labour market during the COVID-19 crisis.
Moreover, civil servants must never forget that it is their duty – and privilege – to serve the public. That’s why civil servants in English are also known as public servants, while in Chinese they are self-explanatorily referred to as “gong wuyuan” (“people engaged in public affairs”). By definition, public service involves the willingness to place the needs of others before one’s own.
– Harald Brüning
