Singapore announces 60 percent pay raise for
ministers
By Seth Mydans
Published: April 9, 2007
SINGAPORE: How much money does it take to keep a Singapore
government minister happy? The government says a million dollars is
not enough, and on Monday it announced a 60 percent boost in
ministers' salaries, to an average of 1.9 million Singapore
dollars, or $1.26 million, by next year.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will see his pay jump to 3.1 million
Singapore dollars, five times the $400,000 earned by President
George W. Bush.
In this nation where the bottom line truly is the bottom line, the
argument goes, you've got to pay to get them and you've got to pay
to keep them.
"If we don't do that, in the long term, the government system will
slowly crumble and collapse," Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean told
reporters last month.
As the minister who oversees the civil service, Teo announced the
pay hikes Monday, saying: "We don't want pay to be the reason for
people to join us. But we also don't want pay to be the reason for
them not to join us, or to leave after joining us."
It is a pay system created in 1994 by Singapore's founder, Lee Kuan
Yew, pegging the salaries of government ministers and top civil
servants to the money they might earn at the top of the private
sector.
Defending the system last month against an unusual public yelp of
pain, Lee Kuan Yew painted a horrifying picture of a Singapore
governed by ministers who earn no more than ministers anywhere
else.
"Your apartment will be worth a fraction of what it is," he said,
"your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our
women will become maids in other people's countries."
Singapore has one of the most efficient and corruption-free
governments in the world.
It is Asia's second-richest country after Japan, with a gross
domestic product per capita of about $31,000, and Lee said it could
well afford to pay its leaders top dollar.
The total of the salaries before the increase amounted to 46
million Singapore dollars a year, he said, or 0.13 percent of
government expenditure - 0.022 percent of gross domestic
product.
Under the government's formula, ministers are to be paid two-thirds
of the median of the top eight earners in each of six professions:
accounting, law, banking, engineering, multinational companies and
local manufacturing.
There has been no public sign of discontent among the men and women
who run Singapore, but last month the prime minister noted that
they were earning just 55 percent of this benchmark.
"We don't want pay to be the reason for people to join us," Teo
said Monday in announcing the pay hikes. "But we also don't want
pay to be the reason for them not to join us, or to leave after
joining us."
Talk of the impending pay increase drew an outcry here for weeks
that included letters to newspapers and an online petition that has
collected more than 800 signatures.
The average Singaporean earns something over $2,000 a month, and
the government has voiced concern over a widening gap between rich
and poor.
The ministerial raise comes three months ahead of a 2 percent
increase in the sales tax.
Mohamad Rosle Ahmad wrote in a letter to the editor: "I am sure
Enron and Worldcom paid more than top dollar for their top
executives, and look where their companies are now - six feet
under."
Lee Kuan Yew, whose title is minister mentor, said naysayers like
this need a reality check.
"I say you have no sense of proportion; you don't know what life is
about," he said last month.
"The cure to all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent
government," Lee said. "You get that alternative, and you'll never
put Singapore together again."
He presented himself as an example: "A top lawyer, which I could
easily have become, today earns 4 million Singapore dollars. And he
doesn't have to carry this responsibility. All he's got to do is
advise his client. Win or lose, that's the client's loss or
gain."
The Straits Times newspaper quoted him as saying his current salary
as minister mentor was 2.7 million Singapore dollars.
Money may buy happiness for a government minister, but some
Singaporeans suggested that other motivations should also come into
play for government service.
"What about other redeeming intangibles such as honor and sense of
duty, dedication, passion and commitment, loyalty and service?"
asked Hussin Mutalib in the Straits Times' online forum
recently.
Carolyn Lim, a prominent writer, suggested in an essay in The
Straits Times that Singapore needed a little more heart to go along
with its hard head. "Indeed, a brilliant achiever without the high
purpose of service to others would be the worst possible
ministerial material," she wrote.
"To see a potential prime minister as no different from a potential
top lawyer, and likely to be enticed by the same stupendous salary,
would be to blur the lines between two very different
domains."
The minister mentor brushed aside concerns like that.
"Those are admirable sentiments," he said. "But we live in a real
world."
