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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