[Update 5 Jan 2012: See our latest post Pay Cut for Prime Minister and Ministers, But Note the Make-Up Pay.]
PM Lee has just appointed a committee chaired by Gerard Ee to review ministerial salaries.
As pointed out in today’s Straits Times (printed edition), the government “does not disclose how much each minister is paid”, but the most current figures released by PSD are for the year 2009, which Salary.sg also covered in a previous article:
- President $3.14m
- Prime Minister $3.04m
- Ministerial Grade MR4 $1.57m – senior Perm Secs also get this amount.
- Entry Superscale Grade SR9 $353,000
- Allowance for Members of Parliament $190,000. Note that almost all MPs hold full-time jobs and some are also directors of companies.
When interviewed, the chair of the Ministerial Salaries Review committee, Gerard Ee, said (emphasis mine):
“Whatever we work out, the final answer must include a substantial discount on comparable salaries in the private sector…” (ST, May 22, 2011)
I have 2 questions: How much is “substantial”? Why compare with only “private sector” and not other comparable countries?
No one mentions benchmarking against other similar countries. Is there a reason?
Highest Paid Civil Servants in the World
Senior Permanent Secretaries in Singapore are given a 7-figure annual pay, probably including the one who is trained in French cuisine. 🙂
In UK, the highest paid civil servant is the head of the Office of Fair Trading. He gets a meagre 280k pounds, which is less than S$600k. If you google for “highest paid civil servants in the world”, you will read about complaints from unhappy people in Canada, Ireland and South Africa when their best remunerated civil servants are paid just a fraction of ours.
The fact is that our best paid civil servants are getting multiple times the amount their foreign counterparts are getting.
I would like to see Singapore’s senior civil servants getting roughly the same remuneration as their counterparts in other countries, not multiple times more. I would also like to see them being held accountable for their work and perhaps be subject to early retirements if they are not up to par.
Highest Paid Political Leaders in the World
To the embarrassment of many Singaporeans, we also have the highest paid political leaders in the world.
According to MSN Money, PM Lee is the world’s highest paid politician, earning “by a staggering margin” more than 5 times what the runner-up Donald Tsang (Hong Kong) takes home.
With PM Lee’s salary alone, we can pay the combined salaries of 8 of the world’s highest paid politicians, including Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.
With PM Lee’s salary alone, we can also fund all the 10 highest-paid government jobs in the US, including the jobs of Hillary Clinton, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke and again Barack Obama.
Similar to what I said for civil servants, I would also like to see our political leaders be remunerated by roughly the same amount as their foreign counterparts, not multiple times more.
By how much should Singapore’s ministerial salaries be cut?
89 Comments
BTW, Singaporean politicians get away with such obscene pay because of the conformity-oriented population. I wonder why so many Singaporeans like to compare with the US. How about Australia? New Zealand? Norway? Germany? Sure, politicians in many other countries also receive perks: housing, transportation, etc. However, add it all up and they still don’t equate to millions; just hundreds of thousands.
‘Our junior ministers’ pay can hire two United States (US) presidents to work for us. Still, top 30 politician salaries in the world belong to Singapore.’
All this talk of transparency is really annoying because did it occur to really get the ball rolling one must get all office bearers Pm, Ministers, Mps and Public Service Officers including to declare their assets before joining and yearly while in office for all Singaporeans to really believe they are incorruptible? May sound cumbersome but would help to understand their real reason to stand for public service and also highlights if they really deserve Singaporeans support on any talk of remuneration!
I believe with this paycut PAP shows they are willing to listen to feedback from ordinary Singaporeans. The pay is fair.
I am so forced to post my first ever online comment. We must have an honest and clean government, free from corruption in their terms of office. We cannot compare with other countries as their salaries may be have an unknown portion. Singapore as a country is already different and unique as we do not have any natural resources. All we have is ourselves to depend on. We must have the best of Singapore to take this country forward. I see that the minister pay is justifiable and should not be reduced at all. As long as we have a prudent and efficient government they should be getting the most paid. However they must also ensure that pay also comes with responsibility.
why are we paying our superscale admin service civil servants multi-million & we still need pay multi-million to ministers, to supervise the work of these superscale civil servants ?
cos we are unique. if you disagree, you can always form a political party, get yourself voted in, and change the system.
The president only 3.4 and what it looks like in other countries? I will not wait for an answer , because it is the data from 2012. I go clean up the car – szoruj
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