Friday, April 6, 2007 20:00
Questionable benchmarking formula
In In Your Words, Yeo Toon Joo • 118 views • 0 Comments
This is filed under “Letters To TOC”.
Firstly, I cannot understand or accept the PM’s and MM’s logic or rationale for the incredible pay hike for our cabinet ministers.
Why do they want us to believe that our cabinet ministers are that avaricious, corruptible, self-serving and mercenary, and so open to the highest bidders?
In justifying the astronomical pay for our cabinet ministers the PM and MM use the arbitrary – and questionable – device of benchmarking their pay with the top earners in the top professions, including, I understand, top CEOs.
Have they considered this point: the top pay cited for top CEO or top professional in the private sector was only for the top honcho, i.e. only for the head of the corporation or practice, and not for everyone of his managers.
In that case and by the same token, only the Prime Minister of Singapore Inc. should be treated as the CEO or top dog of the business and be given such excessive remuneration.
The other ministers, being heads of department in Singapore Inc., should, therefore, be given salaries/perks commensurate with that of Singapore Inc’s heads of department.
The Spore Govt’s benchmarking formula – and application – therefore appears tenuous, to put it mildly. If it is really justifiable, then it must logically follow that every head of dept in an Exxon-type of corporation would, therefore, be paid like the chairman of Exxon.
Yeo Toon Joo
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Quan Xi
Tan
Agree, there is a logic for pay increase but no logic for the unbearable benchmark used to facilitate the incredible hike. Well, it is important to get the appropriate benchmarks that bridges the capitalist works perfomed by materialistic ministers with the socialist hearts of the people. The Benchmarking scales are best in Group B or C for Singapore.
An approximate example below
A. Valid and reasonable Benchmarks For Deserved High Pay (whichever is higher)
1. 20 to 30 times of the lowest paid Singaporean workers
2. 50th to 75th centile of the Singaporeans professionals pay
B. Arguable but not discomforting Benchmarks for More Than Deserving Higher Pay
1. 31 to 60 times of the lowest paid Singaporean workers
2. 76th to 90th centile of the Singaporeans professionals pay
3. Benchmarks of most countries government pay scales
C. Discomforting but Bearable Benchmarks for Materialistic High Pay
1. 90th to 97th centile of the Singaporeans professionals pay
2. 76th to 90th centile of selected high paying Singaporeans professionals pay
3. 50th to 75th centile of selected high paying private Singaporeans professionals pay
4. Benchmarks of some big successful countries government pay scales
D. Unbearable Benchmark of Top Richest Men Pay
1. 99.99 centile (only the TOP 8 or so outliers of the norms) of selected high paying private Singaporeans)
2. Absolute Top pay of 1 or 2 ministers prior to entering (disregarding the rest)
Soc
This analogy is shooting yourself in the foot because the premise that Singapore is the company is wrong. It is the individual ministries that are the equivalent in size of corporations and so your argument instead supports the escalation of our PM’s pay to an ungodly amount.
Mangy
Singapore is a country and it should never ever be thought of as a corporation. Based on this premise, comparison between the public and private sector should never have existed in the first place. Therefore, I feel that the existing benchmark should be scrapped altogether.
LKY's Mother
I agree with Teo Chee Hean that any increase
in Ministers’ salaries would not undermine
the moral authority of the government.
In the first place the PAP does not have moral
authority! So how could moral authority that is not
there could be undermined?
Monetary reward has an inverse incorruptible effect.In any case, it is call taking care of your loyalist – a common practice in business.