The old ministerial salary is not yet settled. Although the government hopes the matter will die a natural death it is not yet settled.
Out of all the public debates or discussions in many forums one thing is clear people have not accepted MM Lee's claim or assumption that higher salaries has attracted better-calibre ministers over the past many years or the ministers that we are now having are of the calibre worth such millions.
The benchmarking to private sector's few lucky CEOs is haphazard and not apple-to-apple in comparison. Many of the past Ministers paid millions were found to be just ordinary mortals lacking ability or leadership and many were only at best yes-men who carry out only past policies unable to solve many problems like rising costs of living, inflation, rich-poor divide or traffic congestion problems.
Despite all the presumptions of MM Lee that paying million dollar pay packages will attract better candidates, it is not proven to be so over many past elections.
If government is to offer higher amounts than millions we may still not attract better candidates than who we now have nor any heavy weight ministers capable of solving rising costs or restructuring our economy to value-adding economy.
Therefore we should take up the suggestions made by many people to adopt a KPI to measure ministers' performance and tie their salary level to such KPI.
Some people have suggested tying ministers' salaries to a certain multiples of mean wages of citizens at a certain level. This in principle may be the fairness for it will ensure citizens support of their salaries.
The most positive and supportable formula will to my mind be based on such multiples while offering a link to national KPI index like index on the quality of life established by fair and independent international agency's assessment.
If the overall national KPI like quality-of-life index as posted in another thread reaches to within the first 25th of index the ministers will be justified to receive the minimum of S$600,000.00 pa. Failing this national KPI or quality-of-life index only lower figure say 20% less should be adopted as the base.
Taking into account USA president's or China' PM pay scale and our mean wage level such base of $480,000 - $600,000.00 pa before bonus incentives is a reasonable base which no doubt will attract many committed citizens with some calibre or ability to stand for election and be ministers. If we do not try we will never know. MM Lee has tried to ignore the fact that from among non-CEOs and non-top-entrepreneurs we might indeed have capable people who given the chance will rise up to become good leaders one day.
He himself should also have confirmed that based on past three elections better than millions in salary incentives do not produce any more than mortals who could not even set up proper security system for prisons.
Should any one of the ministers score exceptional personal KPI based on his ministry's measurements of certain results, incentive pays or bonus will be added by quantum of S$300,000.00 per point.
Any ministers who failed in his personal KPI will have deductions made from his base of $480,00000-S$600,000.00 pa at quantum of S$30,000.00 per point.
WKS for example should have his pay of $480,000.00-$600,000.00 reduced by $30,000.00 for every demerit point assessed by such index like quality-of-lfe index.
Bonus should not be higher that 3 months of assessed pay as taxes are people's hard-earned monies and many citizens are still living from hand to mouth and ministers and civil servants are enjoying iron-rice-bowl employment hardly made accountable for any mistakes or losing their jobs due to market downturn or poor company result.
If government is still not sure what we the people are saying they should refer the salary issue as an election issue in the next GE as a referendum with properly phrased bracketed quantum to resolve this issue once and for all instead of relying on their sheer political power to increase their own pays by default.
[url]http://www.il-ireland.com/il/qofl2008/[/url]