witness wrote:
From the global perspective, it seems extremely odd that one of the smallest countries of the world should have the highest paid government in the world. This is in fact a clear indicator that something is seriously wrong with the benchmarking formula as it exists now.
Someone (Low Thia Kiang, I think) suggested that perhaps our minister's salaries should be benchmarked to the incomes of the poorest Singaporeans. Another suggestion was for the benchmark to be associated with the median income of all Singaporeans. The final income of our ministers would then be a multiple of these incomes.
Both suggestions seem to be more reasonable than the present formula which seems to assert that ministers should enjoy high salaries by the mere virtue of their office, even as the poor get poorer. Where is the link to performance when the lot of so many people are not improved?
I support what you have said - our ministers' salary benchmarking to the top earners in the private sector has gone wrong resulting in our ministers already being paid the world's highest pays which are now being claimed as still not enough.
This is because this kind of benchmarking is itself is fallacious being skewed in such a way as to take in the successful and fortunate CEOs but the failures among them are simply excluded from the benchmarks.
The fact is that not all the best CEOs with the kind of ability assumed by the benchmark are taking their million-dollar salaries consistently but they are the changing lot. For every one who is successful they are always those despite the similar abilities and background are not doing well. Not everyone is like Jackson Tai or Wee Cho Yaw, and Jackson Tai cannot always guarantee that he will remain in such category over the sustained period.
To earn the type of multi-million salaries, many of them have seen failures and these are not reported or included in the benchmark.
Many of the high-earner CEOs in the benchmark categories have gone bust, and some have turned to driving taxis or becoming hawkers but ministers are being assumed as if they are the unfailing CEOs who would go on and on to earn multi-million rewards.
Thus the current benchmarking has been exposed as public deception with no objective basis which cannot hold water if subjected to scrutiny.
So, this kind of benchmarking is based on assumptions that the ministers are the individuals listed who know no failures and will always remain successful.
It is a "Head I win tail you lose" deception whereby ministers are assuming that they are unfailing as the benchmarked CEOs represent.
Furthermore, ministers are only wage earners and based on wage earners there will be no apple-to-apple comparison with the CEOs who are runnijng their own businesses and rewarding themselves with the highest pays tolerated by IRAS.
The whole debate in parliament looks like MM Lee is finally being exposed as adopting a benchmarking which is deceptive and calculated to give their ministers what they don't deserve.
When Low Thia Kiang asked the simple question whether by paying the ministers highest salaries in the world could they outperform ministers of Finland, Denmark or Switzerland paid lower salaries, MM Lee was tongue tied and unable to reply in substance.
He could only brush it off by saying without basis that Singapore is better governed than these countries forgeting that the onus is on him to prove his benchmark is indeed water-tight.
He condemns the ministers in these countries as mediocre instead and failing to transform their respective economies.
If this sort of news are to be circulated it will really make us the laughing stock of the whole world.
He could only been seen as trying his last ditch attempt at justifying his benchmark as truthful when clearly it is deceptive and ridiculously unreal.
Can he honestly say the economies of Denmark or Finland are less transformed than that of Singapore?
What has he transformed when 80% of our middle and lower-income earners are suffering from dropping wages and struggling with their mortgage debts over the past 20 years or so due to top-down incompetence in restruciturng the economy to the value-adding knowledge-based model talked about for years.
Owing to his system of taxing and cost recovering all costs against the citizens the domestic sector of the economy has stagnated due to high operating costs. It is only at the slightest recovery of the world recovery, the situation is getting better of late but now MM Lee is claiming success when it is far from it.
If MM Lee indeed has transformed the economy as claimed, we would not have so many middle income earners today begging government to lower fees and charges and asking for jobs, as seen for the period 1997-2004.
Have these ordinary citizens' lives got better due to the so-called transformation which he claims as his achievement over the Danes or Swiss.
Who are we to envy? Next to the benchmark perhaps, MM Lee is going to assume that he is more capable than Li Ka Shing and should receive as much as Li Ka Shing.
This benchmark hence is deceptive as it is only comparing with the successful among CEOs not reflecting true situation as CEOs many of whom have been suffering dropping wages like ordinary workers despite their talents.
The best benchmark which will be objective and fair to all including retention of talents in the public sector is to equate ministers' salaries to a multiple of mean incomes of the lower-income earners or median income earners.
The current benchmarking is flawed and totally unrepresentative of the real wage earner situation in the economy. I has assumed that the benchmarked CEOs would be totally unfailing and there is no dropping of wages or performances among them and only the successful are to be compared with.
Are our ministers' abilities equal to these private sector's bosses and entrepreneurs many of whom receiving the highest pays mentioend might have suffered losses or bankruptcies in downturns or recessions but these facts are conveniently ignored by the benchmarkers who have a conflict of interest in preparing their such a benchmark.
The fact is the intention may be well but the method is wrong or deceptive being calculated only to reward the ministers themselves without proper basis.