Whose future is
“shining”, really?
Friday, 27 June
2008, 5:00 pm | 3,661 views
Andrew
Loh
Ministers scheduled to be
given a third pay hike this year
If you ask me, the
future is really shining for us… We will survive; this is a red
dot, which we can make redder and brighter. (MM
Lee, 2006)
We are into a period
of good economic growth and social development… If there are no
wars or oil crises, this golden period can stretch out over many
years… (Singapore in a golden period, says MM
Lee, 2007),
Mdm Soh (not her real name)
is more than 70 years old and has been working as an office cleaner
for more than a year. Her daily routine starts at
7am
and ends
at 5pm, which means she puts in 10
hours of work, including a one hour lunch break. She works five and
a half days per week – 55 hours in all.
She is paid $650 per
month.
$2.95 per hour.
In January 2008, the
Minister for Health, in advocating for the implementation of means
testing starting at the median income, cited the figure of $2,170
for full-time employed residents. Mdm Soh clearly is not in this
income bracket, even though she works full time.
Mdm Soh says that she
started work when she was 10 years old, doing various jobs over the
years. Although she finds life tough with the current rate of
record inflation, she declines help from her children. “They also
have their families,” she says. “I’ll just make do with what I
have. I don’t go out except for work and maybe once in a while I
buy a little 4D”, she says in Teochew, referring to the lottery.
She quickly adds that she spends “at the most just one dollar’s
worth” on the lottery.
The elites – a third pay
hike
At the other end of the
spectrum, top Government ministers had their salaries increased
twice in 2007, the second one in December of that year. According
to a
Straits Times
report:
Under the revised salary
package announced by the Public Service Division (PSD) on Thursday,
ministers at the starting grade will take home $1.94 million next
year – an increase of 21 per cent over this year’s $1.6
million.
Also in the same
report:
With the pay revision, the
annual salary for President SR Nathan will go up from $3.1 million
this year to $3.87 million in 2008, the Prime Minister’s from $3.09
million to $3.76 million, ministers and senior permanent
secretaries, from $1.593 million to $1.94 million, entry superscale
grade Admin officers, from $384,000 to $398,000 and MPs, from
$216,300 to $225,000.
The Prime Minister’s salary
was increased by $670,000 per year. That is about $55,833 per
month. The PM’s salary is currently $3.76m per year ($313,333 per
month).
According to the
Reuters news
report, “Singapore’s economic boom widens
income gap” (9 November,
2007):
“The proportion of Singapore
residents earning less than S$1,000 (US$690) a month rose to 18
percent last year, from 16 percent in 2002, central bank data
released late last month show… and Singapore’s Gini coefficient, a
measure of income inequality, has worsened from 42.5 in 1998 to
47.2 in 2006, and is now in league with the Philippines (46.1) and
Guatemala (48.3), and worse than China (44.7), data from
Singapore’s Household Survey and the World Bank show”.
The Government is expected
to announce a third salary increase for civil servants, including
ministers, later this year, as part of a three-step effort to close
the gap in the benchmark for ministers’ salaries. This was
explained by Minister in Charge of the Civil Service, Teo Chee
Hean, on the 9th of April,
2007:
Salaries at the MR4 Grade
are currently at 55% of the benchmark. Given the large gap, it is
not realistic to close the gap fully in one go. Instead, we will
close half of the current gap, that is, from 55% of the benchmark,
to 77% of the benchmark by the end of this year.
This will be
effected in two steps – one step now, and another step at the end
of this year. Next year, we aim to close half of the remaining gap,
bringing salaries to 88% of the benchmark by end-2008.
(Sprinter)
What is
the Government doing about the income gap for ordinary
Singaporeans, especially the poor? It prefers to take a “targeted
approach”, giving periodic handouts and assistance and schemes like
the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS). The Government has dismissed
suggestions for the institution of a minimum wage and has also
regularly warned that “subsidies will not solve
Singapore’s
problems”.
(Lee
Kuan Yew)
Give our elderly a sense of
peace and security
Yet,
with the anticipated third increase in ministers’ salaries, which
is already the highest in the world, Singaporeans are beginning to
wonder if only the top few are reaping the rewards of the hard work
which everyone had put in during the boom
times.
As was asked in an
earlier
article on TOC, “Why have Singaporeans, with one of the
highest savings rates in the world, become so dependent on
government handouts to even just get by?” With regards to the
latest handout as reported by Channel NewsAsia,
Over 780,000 households
to receive $134m of utility rebates, one wonders why
such a huge number of Singaporean households need such handouts to
pay their utilities.
Have Singaporeans,
consistently ranked one of the hardest-working and overworked,
suddenly become beggars with hands extended towards the Government
all the time, even as they continue to strive and compete with
foreigners?
Perhaps it is time to
seriously consider a more institutionalised approach to closing the
income gap, such as having a minimum wage policy, and give
Singaporeans, especially the working elderly such as Mdm Soh, a
sense of security and peace in their twilight years. This is more
pertinent now as the Government is also encouraging Singaporeans to
work for as long as one can. Minister Lim Boon Heng even urged
Singaporeans not to think of retiring (Channel
NewsAsia).
To have someone like Mdm Soh
work for $2.95 an hour is, in all honesty, quite shameful for a
country which regularly trumpets its economic achievements. But
more importantly, it says something about how we value those who
have given practically their entire lives helping
Singapore
become this
“world-class” city which the Government now boasts
about.
While chatting with Mdm Soh,
she was very anxious not to be seen talking to me too long. “I have
to get back to work, or else my boss will be looking for me”, she
would periodically say. I could not help but wonder: Are our
elderly so frightened of not being able to find jobs that they
would accept any jobs offered to them, even if they do not pay them
fairly?
As former NTUC Income CEO
Tan Kin Lian said
here:
I believe that local workers
deserve to have an adequate salary for a hard day’s work. This
salary has to be commensurate with the cost of living. It should be
adequate for a worker to feed a family, at least in a frugal way.
The worker should not be expected to work for 12 hours a day, and
still not earn enough for the family.
Indeed, our elderly who put
in full-time work should not be struggling to keep up, or made to
work for less than what would be minimum wage, all in the name of
“globalisation” or “competition”.
Otherwise, ministers should
be prepared for a severe backlash if and when they increase their
own salaries later this year – the third time in two years – by
millions of dollars again.
It seems that this “golden
era” which MM Lee declared we are in is only for a select group –
and we also wonder whose future it is that is “really
shining”.
Source:
http://theonlinecitizen.com
ST Forum 4 April
2008
Elderly toilet cleaners a sad reflection of society
here
Recently, I
was at a toilet in a shopping centre when I noticed an elderly
woman with a bent and crooked back trying to clean the floor while
fashionable young women applied their lipsticks and checked their
hairdos in the mirror.
I find this scene to be a sad reflection of society here, one that
is played out daily in numerous shopping centres.
During the course of my travels through China, from rural Yunnan to
cosmopolitan Shanghai, I never once encountered an elderly toilet
cleaner. This is perhaps
because in China, it is considered a stain on the family honour if
your mother, grandmother or aunt has to clean toilets to support
herself, so the elderly are usually supported by the family
network.
The situation is the same in the Philippines.
Singapore seems unique in having the highest density of elderly
toilet cleaners in the world, surely not an accolade to be proud
of.
Although cleaning toilets is easy to learn, it is far from
pleasant, given the bad toilet habits of Singaporeans.
Besides this, it is a job that may be hazardous for the elderly,
who are more likely to suffer serious fractures should they slip on
the wet toilet floor.
To
resolve this situation, perhaps the Ministry of Community
Development, Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Manpower can work
together to consider the following suggestions:
·
Survey these elderly cleaners to find
out more about their financial and social situation, to see what
sort of aid can be provided.
·
Devise incentives for the proprietors
of food outlets, supermarkets and childcare centres to employ these
elderly folk in the preparation or packing of food
instead.
·
Increase the wages of toilet cleaners
as unpleasant jobs should command a higher wage so that younger
people would want to take them up.
·
Allow foreign workers to do the
job.
Encourage students in schools to empathise with toilet cleaners and
practise good toilet habits by periodically making them clean
school toilets.
Dr Anne Chong Su Yan
Posted by
LuckySingaporean