Please see my preceding post, where I wrote (again) about new directions for this blog.
Recently I said that I would change the focus of my blog. I had planned to make it more practical and useful for the average Singaporean, taking into consideration the prevailing social trends, government policies etc in this country.ST April 14, 2007This letter is well-written. It is a very careful, very deliberate gloss, over actual reality. Nothing that the letter says is actually untrue. Yet the overall picture that the letter does paint is quite misleading.
Promotion in Civil Service based on merit
I REFER to the letter, 'Is promotion in Civil Service based on tenure?' (ST, April 11), by Ms Elsie Tan Hwee Lian.
To be promoted, a civil servant has to show potential to handle a bigger job. A person with a high potential can expect to progress more quickly, provided he is also a consistently good performer.
An officer who does not show the potential to take on greater responsibilities will not be promoted, even if he has many years of service. Promotion is based on merit and not automatic, according to his years of service.
Ms Tan also noted that there are officers who continue to perform the same job after promotion. Unlike the private sector, civil servants are paid according to their salary grade and not by job appointment.
It is not unusual to have officers doing higher-level jobs while still in a lower grade. This is to stretch and test them. They will be promoted to the grade commensurate with the job size only when they are able to handle the higher job competently.
All Civil Service salary schemes have a performance-bonus component. Those who do well will be paid performance bonuses, with the better ones getting a higher quantum. Those who just meet the job requirements or under-perform will not get any performance bonus.
Most of our graduate schemes have a variable merit-increment system, where the annual increments are linked to performance.
In short, the appraisal system ensures that officers receive salaries that are commensurate with their contributions, abilities and potential.
Ong Toon Hui (Ms)
Director, Leadership Development
Public Service Division
Prime Minister's Office
"After being awarded a scholarship, scholar officers are commissioned four months ahead of their peers amd miss the second half of their professional military training during OCS. Although they make up some of this training during their academic summers, they are still very inexperienced compared to their peers who have spent four years in operational service.
Despite this vast difference in experience, scholar officers still will be promoted to captain one year after graduation at approximately the same time as their nonscholar peers. This program results in scholar officers being promoted far faster than their nonscholarship peers, despite the fact that they have considerably less operational experience.
.... The SAF uses a system in which officers have a currently estimated potential to determine how far an officer can go and terminal rank during his or her career. For the most part, this CEP is formed during OCS based on the officer's cadet performance and educational background ....
An officer's CEP spells out his or her career path for assignments, education opportunities, promotion and attendance at military schools. The result of this system is that officers are selected and groomed for even the most senior leadership positions in the SAF based on little more than on how they performed as a cadet during OCS and the strength of their high school transcript."
Today we examine another aspect of the official rationale behind the ministers' exorbitant salary increase. This rationale can be expressed as follows:"Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the pay of cabinet ministers has fallen behind top private-sector earners in Singapore and called for the gap to be closed to keep talent in the government ... Talented Singaporeans are being head-hunted by top global companies as well as by other governments eager to replicate Singapore's success story, Lee said. - Link.
No doubt some civil servants are in high demand by the private sector. Then again, Singaporeans are not complaining about salary increases for civil servants in general. Singaporeans are complaining about salary increases for the PAP ministers.
And these PAP ministers - would "top global companies" really want to hire them?
To investigate this question, all we have to do is draw up a list of ex-PAP ministers, and find out where they went and what they did, after they left politics. If top global companies were really so eager to hire them, we should expect to find ex-PAP ministers working in top corporations such as BP, Shell, Microsoft, Citigroup, British Airways or other Fortune Global 500 companies.
I did some quick googling, and this is what I managed to find:
AND have about half a million US dollars left over, to give away to charity.(1) one US President;
(2) one UK Prime Minister;
(3) one Japanese Prime Minister; AND
(4) one German Chancellor
World leader salary comparison
April 9, 2007
According to a government announcement Monday, the prime minister of Singapore will draw an annual salary of slightly more than $2 million starting next year.
A look at how that stacks up:
President George W. Bush: $440,000
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain: $370,000 (187,000£)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan: $360,000
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany: $350,000 (261,500 euros)
Some very startling leaps in logic there, from Lee Kuan Yew. But let's humour the man. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that we can indeed ascertain the quality of our PAP ministers, by comparing the economic status of maids and Singaporeans.Singapore ministers set for million-dollar pay hike
..... The opposition also argues that a million-dollar pay hike is unwarranted for leaders of a country that has no legal minimum wage and where 20 percent of the population earns an average monthly salary of S$1,500 ($991).But Lee Kuan Yew -- modern Singapore's first prime minister, who is still the leading voice in his son's cabinet -- will have none of it.
"The cure to all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government," Lee senior told the Straits Times on Thursday, adding that it is "absurd" for Singaporeans to quarrel about ministerial pay and warned that Singapore would suffer it the government could not pay competitive salaries.
"Your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries," he said.
Let's take a moment to think about the earning power of (1) Singapore's poorer citizens and (2) Singapore's foreign maids.The basic idea is quite simple. Although foreign maids get low salaries in Singapore, their employer covers almost all their necessary expenses - food, accommodation, utilities, medical care etc. When you factor all that in, you will see that the average foreign maid's earnings are quite comparable to the earnings of the average Singaporean in the bottom 20% .
Let's say Madam Jin Pai Mia is a 55-year-old spinster belonging to the Low-Income Singaporean category. She works as a cleaner in a commercial office building and earns $900 a month.
Madam Jin takes the MRT to and from work every day. That's about $1.50 x 2 x 24 days = $72 a month. She pays about $60 for her water and electricity bills at home. She eats three meals a day, each costing an average of $3.00. That's $3.00 x 3 meals x 30 days = $270 a month on food. Let's say Madam Jin falls sick once in a while and needs to see the doctor. We'll put it at $20 a month. She rents a flat from the HDB. Let's say it's $250 a month (I don't know how much it costs - it's just my guesstimate).
That's $672 on basic stuff like transportation, water, electricity, food, medical care and accommodation. After deducting $672 from Madam Jin's monthly salary of $900, she's left with $228.
Now, a foreign domestic maid gets about $300 a month. However, the maid does not need to spend money on public transport to get to work each day. Her employer pays the electricity and water bills and provides three meals a day. The maid's accommodation is essentially free. If the maid falls ill, the employer is, by law, responsible for her medical expenses.
So when the maid gets $300 a month, the maid really earns $300 a month.
However, when Madam Jin gets $900, she's really earning just $228 a month.
"I can't believe it. I am looking after 301 million citizens,
CNN article below is posted for my future reference:
Singapore ministers set for million-dollar pay hike
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -- The salary of the prime minister of Singapore is more than three times that of U.S. President George W. Bush and about four times that of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But that is not enough.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong may soon be getting a hefty pay rise as part of a controversial ministerial salary hike that has infuriated many Singaporeans.
Lee, who is estimated to earn about S$2 million (US$1.32 million) per year, said last month that the salaries of Singapore ministers, top public officials and judges have fallen way below benchmark private sector salaries and may need to be doubled.
"It is critical for us to keep these salaries competitive, so as to be able to bring in a continuing flow of able and successful people," Lee said in a speech in March.
Lee said that Singapore ministers, who currently earn about S$1.2 million (US$800,00) a year, should be earning S$2.2 million (US$1.45 million).Details of the new ministerial salaries will be announced in parliament on April 9.
Since 1994, the salaries of Singapore ministers have been set at two-thirds the median pay of the 48 best-paid bankers, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and executives in multi-nationals and manufacturing firms.
But the latest salary hike, which comes at a time when income disparity in Singapore is wider than ever, has sparked an outpour of unusually blunt criticism from Singaporeans.
Hundreds have signed an online petition and the readers' letter columns of the state-controlled newspapers -- one of the few outlets for dissenting views in the city-state -- have published a series of letters protesting the planned hike.
"Government always wins"
Some Singaporeans argue that the six lucrative professions on which ministers' salaries are based do not reflect the country's economy or the government's performance.
"No matter what happens to the economy, the government always wins because it takes only the best results," Jacob Tan said in a letter to the Straits Times.
And given that a 2 percentage point rise in sales tax from July will further hit the poor, some said the government plan is tactless.
"I am rather disappointed with the government's insensitivity," reader Vanessa Teo said.
But the sharpest criticism was online. The "awesome raise on top of their already obscene pay is completely unjustifiable," read an online petition that has gathered 304 signatures.
Given the rare public outcry, analysts said the government may now hesitate to raise salaries by the full S$1 million.
"I would be surprised if they implemented the full formula that would give them over S$2 million," said Garry Rodan, director of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University.
The government defends the high salaries as necessary to attract the brightest people and to prevent corruption.
"If we don't do that ... corruption will set in and we will become like many other countries," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean was quoted as saying in the Straits Times last week.
Singapore government officials' salaries are set by different wage formulas, depending on their seniority. The figures are not readily available to the public, but the prime minister earned S$1.94 million in 2000, according to the Straits Times.
Ministers' wages were last raised in 2000, but were cut in 2001 and 2003 during the economic downturn, although the cuts have since been reversed, the Public Service Division said.
"Able generals"
Some argue that Singapore ministers are not overpaid, but that ministers elsewhere are underpaid.
Singapore is an oasis of wealth, peace and law and order in a region rife with poverty, violence and corruption.
The island state is Asia's second-richest country after Japan, with a gross domestic product per capita of about $31,000.
The World Economic Forum ranks Singapore as the fifth-most competitive of 125 economies in 2006, while Transparency International said the city-state was the fifth-most corruption-free nation out of 163. Isn't that worth a price?
"According to a Chinese proverb, an able general is worth more than 10,000 foot soldiers. So too is the worth of our leaders if they have the wisdom to help us weather global competition," reader Yik Keng Yeong said.
But critics say that the prosperity and security enjoyed by Singaporeans are not that different from other Asian first-world economies such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan, where government ministers do not command such high salaries.
Finland, for instance, beat Singapore in the WEF and Transparency International polls -- as second-most competitive and most corruption-free country -- but its Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen earns about a sixth of Lee's estimated salary.
What irks Singapore's opposition parties is that the million-dollar salaries are only accessible to members of Lee's ruling People's Action Party. Opposition politicians have been crippled by defamation lawsuits brought by government ministers and no opposition party has ever held a ministerial post.
The opposition also argues that a million-dollar pay hike is unwarranted for leaders of a country that has no legal minimum wage and where 20 percent of the population earns an average monthly salary of S$1,500 ($991).
But Lee Kuan Yew -- modern Singapore's first prime minister, who is still the leading voice in his son's cabinet -- will have none of it.
"The cure to all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government," Lee senior told the Straits Times on Thursday, adding that it is "absurd" for Singaporeans to quarrel about ministerial pay and warned that Singapore would suffer it the government could not pay competitive salaries.
"Your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries," he said.
L is a headhunter with many years of experience. Until recently, she was an expat in Singapore. Now she has relocated. My wife and L are friends and so last week, L called Mrs Wang to talk about her new life in Hong Kong.