By Eugene Yeo
The PAP and its minions have always defended their bloated salaries on the pretext that they have kept our civil service largely efficient and corruption-free.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
While I have no complaints about our civil service - in spite of the occasional lapses, they do get things done at times; the present PAP team cannot take credit for the work of its predecessors.
Did the British bequeath us a corrupted and inefficient civil service after they left ? Did the PAP government build the entire civil service from scratch ?
Unlike some other Third World countries who were oppressed and exploited by their colonial masters, the British did their part in preparing Singapore for eventual self-government by passing on their expertise and experience in governance to us.
We inherited the British Westminister Parliamentary system, their judiciary, and education system. All the PAP did is simply to build on what was already there when they took over the reins of government.
When Hong Kong was passed over to Communist China in 1997, its civil service did not collapse overnight and even after some alterations were made by the Chinese authorities to the administrative structure, it still functions well to this day.
This shows that as long there is a core system put in place, it matters little whoever runs the civil service unless it is dismantled entirely like in Myanmar. Most mundane administrative tasks can essentially run on auto-pilot mode unless there is interference from the authorities above.
After Singapore gained independence in 1965, it was the Old Guards of the PAP who transformed Singapore into an Asian economic powerhouse and they were not paid such extravagant salaries in those days.
The present PAP leaders are downright shameless to claim undeserved credit for themselves to justify their high salaries where all they did is to simply to assume ownership of the civil service.
Why should we be paying them for the contributions of past leaders ? Going by their reasoning, we might as well pay a yearly “honorarium” to the United Kingdom for leaving us their administrative system !
The civil service is run by many hardworking, honest and down-to-earth ordinary Singaporeans who are paid pittance for their work. It is these junior officers on the ground who deserve a pay rise and not the upper echelons of the service. Despite their relatively low pay, is there pervasive corruption in the ranks and files of the service ?
High salaries do not prevent corruption. Greed knows no bounds. Only constant vigilance within the organization and strict laws to punish transgressors can keep corruption at bay. It would be foolhardy to assume that a system can be trusted on the merits of trust alone without any external checks and balances put in place.
A top civil servant like a Permanent Secretary takes home more than S$50,000 monthly, more than the top-earning lawyers and doctors. Will he or she be able to command a higher salary with his / her academic qualifications in the private sector ? I seriously doubt so. Therefore, the argument that we need to pay high salaries to keep the best talent doesn’t hold any grounds at all.
Singapore has one of the best education system in the world. Our students constantly top international competition in mathematics and science. We have a high literacy rate of over 95% and more than half of the population has some sort of tertiary education. There is more than enough talent to filled up all levels of position in the civil service.
The most direct and appropriate way of retaining the best talent in the service is to do away with the scholarships and implement real meritocracy in the civil service where anybody can rise up to the highest rank based on their work performance regardless of their academic qualifications.
As the administrative arm of the government, the civil service should be depoliticized and allowed to function independently of partisan differences so that it can continue to serve the people well even when there is a change of government.
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