Huge pay cuts expected for President and Cabinet??

[Jman888]

Happy?

 

[Rongerald]

I remember reading SDP is going to launch their alternative pay cuts plans for our ministers.

 

Will SDP accuse PAP for copying their ideas? So the PAP one better be released first. LOL

[Pchmj]

Maybe down salary, but up bonus. End up same annual pay.

[Scb11980]

problem is transparency

 

we dont really know the true final renumeration

 

eg

 

those completed 2 terms are entitled to life long pension on top of their salary

board of directors

advisors to various companies

their own company and jobs

 

[Vulcann]

Happy?

 

We will only be happy if the headline is like that:

 

COE, ERP, ARF, PARF, ROAD TAX, FUEL TAX ALL SCRAPPED!!!

 

[laugh]

 

Cut their pay the balance will give us citizens meh?

[Roh96]

Those newly appointed ones sure bang balls. Those old birds will be thinking "heng ah we just got a fat 8 mths bonus last yr, and the fat pay for the past decade...mai hiam liao."

[Jonjees]

Happy?

 

are they going to take the cut and divide it amongst the citizens?

if no, it still goes back to the unknown reserves and doesnt benefit anyone.

[Jman888]

We will only be happy if the headline is like that:

 

COE, ERP, ARF, PARF, ROAD TAX, FUEL TAX ALL SCRAPPED!!!

 

[laugh]

 

Cut their pay the balance will give us citizens meh?

 

 

give you one inch you want 10 feets [laugh]

[Vega]

Huge is a very subjective word. lets wait for the detail.

[Roh96]

Happy?

 

I hope they can make it transparent to the public. This is a long overdue correction for their mistake. Losing a GRC is good, at least it wake up their dreams.

[CKP]

Singapore announces 60 percent pay raise for ministers

 

By Seth Mydans

 

Published: Monday, April 9, 2007

 

SINGAPORE How much money does it take to keep a Singapore government minister happy? The government says a million dollars is not enough, and on Monday it announced a 60 percent boost in ministers' salaries, to an average of 1.9 million Singapore dollars, or $1.26 million, by next year.

 

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will see his pay jump to 3.1 million Singapore dollars, five times the $400,000 earned by President George W. Bush.

 

In this nation where the bottom line truly is the bottom line, the argument goes, you've got to pay to get them and you've got to pay to keep them.

 

"If we don't do that, in the long term, the government system will slowly crumble and collapse," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean told reporters last month.

 

As the minister who oversees the civil service, Teo announced the pay hikes Monday, saying: "We don't want pay to be the reason for people to join us. But we also don't want pay to be the reason for them not to join us, or to leave after joining us."

 

It is a pay system created in 1994 by Singapore's founder, Lee Kuan Yew, pegging the salaries of government ministers and top civil servants to the money they might earn at the top of the private sector.

 

Defending the system last month against an unusual public yelp of pain, Lee Kuan Yew painted a horrifying picture of a Singapore governed by ministers who earn no more than ministers anywhere else.

 

"Your apartment will be worth a fraction of what it is," he said, "your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries."

 

Singapore has one of the most efficient and corruption-free governments in the world.

 

It is Asia's second-richest country after Japan, with a gross domestic product per capita of about $31,000, and Lee said it could well afford to pay its leaders top dollar.

 

The total of the salaries before the increase amounted to 46 million Singapore dollars a year, he said, or 0.13 percent of government expenditure - 0.022 percent of gross domestic product.

 

Under the government's formula, ministers are to be paid two-thirds of the median of the top eight earners in each of six professions: accounting, law, banking, engineering, multinational companies and local manufacturing.

 

There has been no public sign of discontent among the men and women who run Singapore, but last month the prime minister noted that they were earning just 55 percent of this benchmark.

 

"We don't want pay to be the reason for people to join us," Teo said Monday in announcing the pay hikes. "But we also don't want pay to be the reason for them not to join us, or to leave after joining us."

 

Talk of the impending pay increase drew an outcry here for weeks that included letters to newspapers and an online petition that has collected more than 800 signatures.

 

The average Singaporean earns something over $2,000 a month, and the government has voiced concern over a widening gap between rich and poor.

 

The ministerial raise comes three months ahead of a 2 percent increase in the sales tax.

 

Mohamad Rosle Ahmad wrote in a letter to the editor: "I am sure Enron and Worldcom paid more than top dollar for their top executives, and look where their companies are now - six feet under."

 

Lee Kuan Yew, whose title is minister mentor, said naysayers like this need a reality check.

 

"I say you have no sense of proportion; you don't know what life is about," he said last month.

 

"The cure to all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government," Lee said. "You get that alternative, and you'll never put Singapore together again."

 

He presented himself as an example: "A top lawyer, which I could easily have become, today earns 4 million Singapore dollars. And he doesn't have to carry this responsibility. All he's got to do is advise his client. Win or lose, that's the client's loss or gain."

 

The Straits Times newspaper quoted him as saying his current salary as minister mentor was 2.7 million Singapore dollars.

 

Money may buy happiness for a government minister, but some Singaporeans suggested that other motivations should also come into play for government service.

 

"What about other redeeming intangibles such as honor and sense of duty, dedication, passion and commitment, loyalty and service?" asked Hussin Mutalib in the Straits Times' online forum recently.

 

Carolyn Lim, a prominent writer, suggested in an essay in The Straits Times that Singapore needed a little more heart to go along with its hard head. "Indeed, a brilliant achiever without the high purpose of service to others would be the worst possible ministerial material," she wrote.

 

"To see a potential prime minister as no different from a potential top lawyer, and likely to be enticed by the same stupendous salary, would be to blur the lines between two very different domains."

 

The minister mentor brushed aside concerns like that.

 

"Those are admirable sentiments," he said. "But we live in a real world."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/world/as....3.5200498.html

 

 

Go back to 2007 maybe?

 

Edited November 9, 2011 by CKP

[Vulcann]

give you one inch you want 10 feets [laugh]

 

11 feet can?

 

[Vulcann]

are they going to take the cut and divide it amongst the citizens?

if no, it still goes back to the unknown reserves and doesnt benefit anyone.

 

My point exactly

[Alim]

cut and add variable component in salary package, back to square one.

[CKP]

"If we don't do that, in the long term, the government system will slowly crumble and collapse," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean told reporters last month.

 

After the pay cuts, Singapore government will slowly crumble and collapse as warned by Teo Chee Hean in 2007.

 

Be careful what many here wish for.

 

 

[Vulcann]

Huge is a very subjective word. lets wait for the detail.

 

Scenario:

 

The review committee has recommended a pay cut of 50% WEF 03 May 2011 for all cabinet members as well as the for the EP after taking in all suggestions from the public and through months and months of review.

 

[small print]

 

Their bonuses will be at a fixed rate of 6 months plus the 1% of last year's GDP and a flexible rate of up to 50% of the top 10 professionals' highest pay package. In addition their pension will be 2x their last drawn salary for life.

 

[laugh]

Edited November 9, 2011 by Vulcann

[Vulcann]

"If we don't do that, in the long term, the government system will slowly crumble and collapse," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean told reporters last month.

 

After the pay cuts, Singapore government will slowly crumble and collapse as warned by Teo Chee Hean in 2007.

 

Be careful what many here wish for.

 

 

[sweatdrop]

[Rubberstamp]

are they going to take the cut and divide it amongst the citizens?

if no, it still goes back to the unknown reserves and doesnt benefit anyone.

 

then, why do think so many people in singapore are unhappy about mininster's pay?