Thursday, April 12

The Minister salary increase thingy

I'm pretty fascinated by the hooha generated by the recent issue significantly increasing the Minister salary.

Maybe its because I'm a Malaysian. I think Singaporeans are taking their government for granted. Be thankful for being ranked high for government transparency, stability and low corruption.

Its a well known fact that the private sectors are paying better than the public sector. Thats one reason why I'm being held back to be a teacher - a civil servant. Mr Ego loves the power to mould the mind, but the pay cut becomes a deterring consideration now that I'm the sole breadwinner.

Money doesn't neccessary make one happy.
Lack of money is more likely to make someone unhappy.

Yes, your Ministers already have super high pay compared to us. But doesn't your company's CEO get many more times than you already? Most of us don't even know the superscale pay that our CEO is getting. Most even get a large part of their salary through the company's profit.

Why don't you go complain about your CEO instead? Oh, complaining about CEO will cost you your job, but complaining about MP is free. ^_^

Being a Minister isn't a very glamourous job, especially with citizens who love complaining. It isn't a job that most of us are dying for. So I would think that paying more for talent retention is "peanuts".

I'm result-oriented. Even if Thai premier Thaksin is guilty of corruption, I can close one eye because of his great contribution to the Thai economy. Its better than getting a clean guy who is incompetent.

Thaksin > Blinky (my ex-boss)

But isn't it better to have clean guys who can deliver, like your Ministers (in my opinion)?

Do we want a Citigroup-Goldman Sach situation where 15 private bankers were poached by another company in one go?

PM Lee is only hedging. Its a small price (taking into account of Singapore's economy) to protect against risk of a brain drain in the small tiny red dot of Singapore.

So sue me.

Afternote: I do not expect everyone to agree with me. But you gotta agree theres no right or wrong. It depends on the perspective you are coming from.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this post just shows that you are really NOT singaporean. go and talk to singaporeans first about why they are unhappy about the increase before you make comments like this.

Anonymous said...

CEO gets their pay from the company revenue. They are responsible to their shareholder or owner. As long as their shareholder and owner earn enough dividends from the company. The CEO pay is justifiable.

However, our Ministers (MP = Member of Paliament, which is different from Ministers), which earn an obscene amount of salary from the people taxes, (GST, Tax, etc).

They should be pay enough, (MP from Potong Pasir suggested to pay them $70000 per month.), but should not be the obscene amount they want.

And furthermore, in the current political system due so many years of 1 party domination. Where the oppositions are greatly disadvantage. And the people voices are hardly being heard in the paliarment.

The PAP MPs who were suppose to speak for its contituents, did not function as they supposed to be. Where I would say, mostly opportunist, riding on the PAP minister tailcoats in the GRC election. They sound more like the PAP spokepersons than the people voices.

With this kind of system, that the PAP goverment has given us. They surely don't deserve a single cents of pay rise.

If the system will failed, and singapore will go back to a third world system, if the PAP are not around as claimed by MM Lee. This has proved that the system they have developed is flawed. They are incompetent.

Anonymous said...

another point to add, a CEO doesn't approve his own salary and bonuses, it is approved by the board of directors. thus there is a check and balance.

in sg, the ministers themselves approve their own salaries. where is the check and balance? so i think i am worth 5 million therefore i will increase my salary to 5 million. who is to stop them?

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