In the latest episode of a podcast which he hosts, Rafizi said the definition of civil servants varied from country to country.

In Malaysia, he said, civil servants included police officers, military personnel and teachers, while in other countries, civil servants referred to only administrative officers.

In the US, security forces and the military were not considered to be part of the civil service, he said.

“So don’t jump on the bandwagon and claim we have a huge number of civil servants,” he said, adding that such claims were made when comparing the size of the civil service in Malaysia with those of other countries.

He said this when asked if the government plans to trim the civil service, which boasts some 1.6 million employees.

Rafizi also compared the government to huge organisations that hired many workers.

“In terms of the civil service, the government is the largest employer,” he said.

He also said there is nothing wrong with having a high ratio of civil servants to the population as long as they worked in the more important and productive sectors.

Rafizi said he found no issue with increasing the number of civil servants.

“If you ask me about increasing the number of civil servants by adding more teachers, even if it means the ratio of civil servants to the population is high, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

“The more teachers, doctors and nurses we have, the better.”

In 2018, then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad accused his predecessors, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Razak, of increasing the civil service from one million to 1.6 million.

Rafizi’s comments on the civil service come barely a month after the public services department (JPA) announced that new civil servants would be appointed on a contractual basis pending a new policy on hiring civil servants for permanent posts without pensions.

Deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has since said the contracts were for a short period before the Cabinet approved the new policy.