A personal diary of my life and my ramblings...
Was roaming through the internet when I found this interesting article ->
http://www.littlespeck.com/content/politics/CTrendsPolitics-061126.htm
Just wondering if anyone knows how true this report is. I never did know our politicians are paid that much more compared to big countries like US and Great Britain.
Ultimately, I know it is difficult to justify exactly how much is enough (well, I am always complaining about my pay) but a direct comparison versus other countries seems to be fair and square. Have anyone read about this in other news report in the papers or elsewhere ?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hey, I meant to comment about this but the thing failed (after I wrote a long long article) because I was previously not on the new beta blogger.
Well, here are my comments again:
I generally agree with MM Lee's thoughts that having a well-paid civil service is a good first step to stemming corruption. A good comfortable and stable life, in my opinion, would be a strong factor in convincing an ordinary civil servant not to risk the law by adopting corrupt practices.
However, I do feel that we cannot allow for outlandish pay to top civil servants. It is not entirely clear if the current pay scales are "outlandish". This was apparently a problem faced by corporate America when CEOs grossly overpaid themselves using the excuse of "attracting top talent" while at the same time presiding over record monetary losses of their companies as well as sacrificing worker benefits.
The Singapore government has so far not failed us in this respect and I hope they will not. The similarities are stark though.
I see several dangers in the current pay system for top civil servants and government ministers: It is pegged to the top executive pay in Singapore. If they decide to go the way of American CEOs, I wonder if the government would blindly follow? And the government would also have to be more transparent about the linking of their pay to their performance (which is hard ... cos how do you judge political/governance performance?)
Anyway, that's my 5 cts (+ gst) worth.
Post a Comment