MAYOR Datuk Seri Maimunah Mohd Sharif has marked her first year at the helm of Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) with a focus on building not only infrastructure, but also a strong administrative foundation for the city’s future.
As part of this effort, she has turned her attention to strengthening succession planning within DBKL.
Currently, four of the local authority’s most senior leadership positions, namely the executive director of planning and heads of City Planning Department, Health and Environment Department and Finance Department, are held by acting officers.
Maimunah has acknowledged that ensuring these posts are filled permanently is key to maintaining the city’s ability to plan, fund and deliver major projects.
She said having a clear, structured succession plan was essential and had made it one of her priorities to put such a system in place during her tenure.
“When I took over, there was no succession plan,” she said.
“Every organisation must have one.
“Otherwise, you have to start grooming people immediately.”
For Maimunah, the vacancies were not just a staffing issue, but a symptom of a bigger problem – the lack of a structured leadership pipeline, which she has sought to address through a ground-up overhaul of DBKL’s operations and human resources.
Maimunah, who has another year to go in office, explained that the challenge laid partly in the promotion structure set by the Public Service Department, which prevented officers from “double-jumping” grades.
“It is not that they do not have the paper qualifications, but we need to follow the process,” she said, elaborating that beyond qualifications, candidates must also have their superior’s recommendation.
She stressed on the importance of having detailed lists and categorisations.
Maimunah has tasked the Human Resource Department and the department heads to work together on this.
She envisions a “very systematic way of doing things”, from project execution to on-site operations.
This includes reviewing all standard operating procedures (SOPs) to ensure they are relevant, up to date and followed.
“In terms of administration, I want to leave a system so that whoever comes next can just follow it.”
Her approach has been to focus on the staff, all 9,400 of them, through what she calls a “bottom-up” strategy.
Soon after taking office, she directed each department to account for its personnel during a retreat, mapping every officer’s role to identify gaps, reform needs and align resources with DBKL’s budget and workload.
“I needed clarity,” she said, adding that this exercise allowed her to plan for “right-sizing”, not downsizing or upsizing, but ensuring that the right people were in the right roles. — By BAVANI M and SHALINI RAVINDRAN
