The appointed Cabinet ministers are entitled to determine whether they need deputy ministers or not, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday.
“We do not know how many deputy ministers will be required. We will give the ministers the right to determine whether they need deputy ministers or not,” he said at a press conference.
Reporters had asked Dr Mahathir when he would announce the rest of the Cabinet ministers and the deputy ministers for the ministers already appointed.
Thirteen ministers have been appointed and sworn in so far.
On a separate matter, Dr Mahathir demanded the loyalty and cooperation of all civil servants to enable the smooth running of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government administration.
He said the government doubted the loyalty of a group of civil servants who had openly and voluntarily supported the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) government by participating in the party campaigns in the run-up to the general election on May 9.
“We have doubts about their loyalty. If they are loyal to the previous party and government and not the present government, this can jeopardise the PH government administration. We want to govern in our own way, according to our manifesto, and we need the cooperation of these officers,” he said.
Dr Mahathir said that while government officers were entitled to vote for the political parties of their choice, they had to be neutral and impartial in the course of discharging their duty as civil servants.
“We want to determine whether we will get the cooperation of these officers to implement the policies of the present government, which is the PH government.
“This is a problem that we face. There are also some other problems which we hope can be overcome for the government administration to run smoothly,” he said.
When asked whether the government would take action against these disloyal civil servants, the Prime Minister said the government would not punish unnecessarily.
“That is not our way of doing things. But we need to know the loyalty of these civil servants because they have committed themselves so deeply towards propagating the propaganda of the previous government. So we hope that they will change their attitude and become neutral again but, of course, they have to carry out the policies and the instructions of the new government,” he said.