cut and paste from a comment from TR
Msg below is being circulated in the internet. Somehow this was
not brought up as an issue in the election campaign by any of the
opposition parties. If not mistaken, $9.6 billions have been put
aside for this purpose and approved by Parliament then.
Singaporeans seem to have poor memory and that is why the MIW have
cleverly crafted this act to ensure that they and their families
are well taken care of even they are being kicked out of
Parliament. Hopefully the act will be repealed one day when the fat
cats are ousted out.
DO MINISTERS RECEIVE 50% OF THEIR LAST-DRAWN PAY FOR LIFE?
You friend is wrong about 50%. It is actually as high as 2/3rds.
The Parliamentary Pensions Act provides that “office holders”
(which means “Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker,
Senior Minister, Minister, Senior Minister of State, Minister of
State, Mayor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Parliamentary
Secretary or Political Secretary”). If you closed your eyes and
threw a stone in Parliament House during a Parliamentary sitting –
assuming if, and it is a big if, that everyone attends (which is
never the case. Parliamentary sittings are lucky if 50% of MPs
attend!) you will hit at least 1 or perhaps 2 with the stone
ricocheting PAP chaps entitled to pensions.
Anyhow, back to your question. The Act has a formula for payment
of the amount of pension. You start with a numerator of 8 (meaning
8 years of service as office holder) and add 1 for every year of
service after that. You divide this number by a fixed denominator
of 27, and you stop when the number hits 2/3rds, which means that
anyone who has 18 years service will hi! t maximum pension. The
amount that is due to him FOR LIFE is found at section 4:
4(2) The annual amount of pension payable to an office-holding
Member shall be —
(a) in respect of every completed year of reckonable service in any
office, or where he has served in
more than one office in each office, at the rate of
one-twenty-seventh (1/27) of his annual salary in that
office; and
(b) in respect of any remaining uncompleted year of reckonable
service in any office, or where he has
served in more than one office in each office, at the rate of
one-three-hundred and twenty-fourth (1/324)
part of his annual salary for each completed month of reckonable
service in that office.
(2A) The annual pension payable to any office-holding Member under
subsection (2) shall not exceed two-thirds
of the highest annual salary of any office held by him.
(3) Subject to sections 13 and 15, a pension granted under this
section shall continue for the life of the person to
whom it is payable but shall not be payable in respect of any
period during which he is again an office-holding
Member; at the end of that period the pension shall again be
payable and shall be re-computed with the addition
of that period to the period of his former reckonable service as an
office-holding Member.
(4) Fo! r the purposes of subsections (2) and (2A), “annual
salary”, in relation to any office, means the annual
equivalent of the highest monthly rate of salary (excluding any
non-pensionable allowances) received by an
office-holding Member during any period of reckonable service as a
holder of that office.
Astonishing, isn’t it that the pension is payable based on the
“Highest annual salary of any office held by him” and “highest
monthly rate of salary”. So, it doesn’t matter that the MP was a
low ranking parliamentary secretary for 17 years, and then became a
multi-million $ minister for 1 year. His pension will be based on
2/3rds of his salary as a minister, as that is his highest annual
salary of any office held by him. So, it also doesn’t matter that
there are occasional reductions in salary during recessions, since
their pension is based on their highest annual salary.
On this basis, SM / PM / MM will get 2/3rd x $3 million for the
rest of their lives. I understand that if they are eligible for
pension and they are still serving, they get both salary plus
pension concurrently. (see section 5).
Or did I forget to tell you that pensions are exempt from income
tax? This is stated in the Income Tax Act!
It gets better. The Act says that the pension can be commutated.
This means that it is paid in 1 lump sum instead of monthly
payments for life. The lump sum is equivalent to 175.14 months of
pension, i.e. 14.6 years of pension. It doesn’t matter that the
minister asks for it because he has terminal cancer and has 3
months to live. He will get 14.6 years of pension paid to him in 1
go, and it will be tax free. If MM’s pension is base! d on 2.5
million (conservative estimate), his commutated pension is $36.5
million. Can buy a GCB with it, without any bank loan!
This is a real scandal. I was horrified when Goh Chok Tong
proposed recently that ministers serve 8 years only, and new ones
come in. It means that the pool of multi-million dollar pension
earners will get bigger and bigger! It will add to the financial
burden of future generations of Singaporeans having to pay for the
pensions of people who have already been paid too much during their
terms of office.
Who in the private sector is entitled to pension? And yet the
ministers, etc are collecting tax free pensions on top of their
world’s highest salaries. Now you know why George Yeo is fighting
so hard to keep his job as minister.
Incidentally, all Admin Service officers, Sr Police &
Military Officers and High Court Judges are still entitled to
pensions in the same manner. No one else in the Civil Service gets
pensions.
