Overall, Dr Mahathir Mohamed has made a positive impact as the prime minister for the past 22 years and he has helped steer the nation to where it is today - an advanced developing nation with a good standard of living and many achievements that we can be proud of, especially in the material and physical realm.

When Dr M retires in October, we may miss his interesting 'diatribes',unless he continues 'commenting', which I sincerely hope he will.

Fresh back from leave, he has advised the civil servants to "not keep o­n demanding higher salaries". He rightly asked civil servants to think in terms of their contributions to national development. Truly, I feel that the term "civil servant" is the "mother of all oxymorons" in that they are often neither "civil" nor "servants".

On the contrary, many government departments - prime examples being the immigration and road transport (RTD) departments - treat the public whom they are duty-bound to serve, more like beggars or cattle.

The public has to endure rude and inefficient service and yet pay money for it. We are all familiar with the endless crowds at RTD and the ridiculous 'limited numbering' system at the immigration department. If these two departments cannot get their act together, we should privatise them.

However I am puzzled by Dr M's remarks that Malaysians are not contributing enough to economic growth by pointing to the relatively lower per capita income compared to some richer European states.

Isn't a lower per capita income illustrate of the fact that the government has not done a better job in uplifting the living standards of the people, rather than the people not contributing enough?

I should point out that professional and managerial salaries in Malaysia are very low even when compared to other Asean nations, let alone internationally (even though we rate well in terms of productivity in the region, albeit not globally).

Plus, if billions of ringgit had not been lost in financial scandals - BMF (Bumiputera Malaysia Finance), Perwaja, Malaysian Airlines and other failed privatisation exercises - our national and per capita income would be much higher. Who is accountable for all these losses to our national treasury?

I am also puzzled by Dr M's remarks that even if workers were given a five-day week, "people tend to do other things...perhaps to earn a living for themselves". Are people not encouraged to better themselves? Incidentally, this seems to indicate that even Dr M concedes that Malaysian workers are poorly paid.

However, I agree that Malaysians needs a paradigm shift towards focusing o­n productivity and fair compensation rather than o­n quantum of compensation per se. Perhaps this was the point of Dr M's latest remarks.

Former Bank Negara Deputy Governor Dr Lin See Yan preached extensively o­n this subject in the 1980s and 1990s.

Concomitant with this shift in thinking, we need to ensure that workers are paid according to productivity, and shareholders and employers do not exploit their workers to reap super-profits. And we should start this exercise with the civil service, pardon the oxymoron.