Currently after Government's 1970s' Wage Restructuring push,
public sector's wages are costing the taxpayers dearly exceeding 2%
of GDP.
As posted in the many forums including Feedback Unit, YPAP,
SGFORUM, etc there have been much wastages caused by duplication of
duties and roles at various ministries such as the
following:-
(1) HDB, Town Council, CDC, PA, Mayors are duplicating each
other.
(2) Extra promotional positions at various government departments
and statutory board can be made short-rein and shorter e.g. there
is no need for so many tiers of management or senior positions like
Adm Assistant, senior adm assist, chief clerk/adm, officer, exe
officer, senior, senior exe, principal, senior principal, deputy
director, director, head, Deputy Head, Deputy CEO, CEO, MD, Vice-
Senior-Vice and President.
In big MNCs, there have adopted mostly a simple three tier
structure: CEO, Senior Manager, Manager, Senior Exe and Exe.
(3) Ministers and Sub-Ministers, and Ministers of State should be
able to serve the entire legislative and Executive since they are
backed up by Permanent Secretary and Deputies who are all highly
paid implementers at scholar-level appointments with high salaries
of $250,000 and above pa.
(4) Statutory Boards and special committees previously branched off
from existing government departments are duplicating with existing
functions of ministries. With reduction of functions of the main
ministries, the corresponding senior officers from Permanent
Secretaries and Deputies level are having lesser functions and
should have their salaries reduced or transferred to relevant
departments with pre-existing functions handled by lower-level
staff without permanent secretaries.
Permanent secretaries are highly paid officers which should not
keep increasing for the purpose of equalization with other
ministries.
Given a revamp along the MNC line of management structure, citizens
should be able to save much more than $650 millions as
announced.
Just activate the PMO department in charge of Systems and Methods
and cost saving, I am sure that the government can save fat-padding
in great number of promotional super-scale and super-manpower
structure as many functions have also been simplified by
computerisations and e-management.
Government is nowadays run on very high salaries even higher than
private sector. As such PM owes a duty to citizens to run the
government competitively within 1-1.5 % of GDP following
computerization and farming out of many tasks to private sectors
and GLCs etc.
Do not just stop the wage revamp at PSA, SIA and HDB. There were
much fatter fats to be trimmed at Town council/HDB/Mayor/PA etc etc
in addition to various ministries.
As shown in the case of PSA, SIA, HDB which recently were revamped
resulting in wage saving without affecting productivity, this
revamp can be done at various ministers with fats cut off by means
of attritions or retrenchments or outsourcing.