YSunday, March 4, 2007

$$$

I was originally going to write a descriptive essay, until I read, in my favorite paper, a wonderful piece of news, that I absolutely must comment on.

However, let me first reiterate the basic points of the article.

"Ministerial, civil service salaries expected to go up"

According to Defense Minister Teo Chee Hean, increase will depend on how far civil servants' pay has lagged behind the private sector, and that salaries will be linked more closely to performance.

There are certain things about this information, and the article itself, that annoy me. Greatly.

First of all, let me say that there definitely people who deserve the pay rise. The first people who come to mind are teachers. (Yes, I'm serious. I'm not sucking up. I highly doubt that any teachers will stumble onto my blog anyway.) Why do I say this? Because teachers have to deal with kids, and sad to say, many kids are pricks. I should know. The students can be very, very, mean. Back in SJI, many of our teachers had been dubbed with nicknames. Unfortunately, the nicknames were more slanted towards being insults and put-downs. I was not mean enough to come up with the names, but I was mean enough to laugh along. Right now, in ACJC, few of our teachers have been christened with new names yet, but I'm sure their time will come. In SJI, we also exploited every single physical and emotional trait of our teachers, and an endless flow of jokes came forth.

So, give them the money. They deserve it. It may offer them solace from the knowledge of their pitiful excuse of an existence.

However, there are civil servants who, I feel, don't really deserve the raise. Those would be ministers and other high-ranking officials. According to the article, services lagging behind the public sector would get a greater pay rise, and one of the services that will get a big raise is the Administrative Service. And it goes without saying, ministries are part of the Administration Service.

Singaporean ministers are one of the highest paid in the world. Really. For example, George Bush gets paid about $400,000 USD per year. While a Singaporean minister is about $800,000 USD per year. That figure, is of course, for lower ranked ministers, one would expect the prime minister to be paid more. What this tells me, is that Singaporeans think that our ministers have a job that's at least twice as important as that of George Bush. Hmm.

One reason for this, given to us unworthy peasants, is that the civil service must be competitive, so as to attract those who are "talented" and "elite" to come work for them. Nonsense. A civil servant should have the passion to work for the people, and for the good of his country. He shouldn't be focused on how he himself will benefit from his line of work. There are people, whom are able to work for charities, doing noble work for free, and not consider their compensation. That's what our minister's should be like. Willing and able to work. There aren't many people out there like that, but hey, there aren't that many openings for ministers as well. I'm not saying the ministers should work for free, just for an amount suitable for the importance and skill required for the job.

Another reason given is that they need to be given a high pay to prevent corruption. It removes the temptation of stealing people's money and doing other bad bad things. You can see how well that works, with TT Durai and the rest of the NKF crew. That I understand completely, but do they really need to be paid such disproportionate amount? SGD$1,200,000 is a lot of money. That's about $100,000 a month. That's about $3,000 a day. I don't even know how one can spend that much money. I honestly don't. It must be nice having to think of creative ways to spend your own money.

"Oh dear! I've got a spare grand lying around. Anyone up to buying bottles of wine and throwing them in the ocean?"

If I was at their age, and earned one-fifth of their salary, I wouldn't be very disappointed.

Yet, our ministers see it fit to raise their salary further.

That's not the only problem I have. The way information is conveyed to the general public infuriates me. The government has done it numerous times. They release information in stages, depending on the situation and timing. For example, they told us about the progress package, which was, to be fair, giving our own money back to us, just a few days before Election Day 2006. Nothing unscrupulous or conscienceless, of course. They did it again, when they told us about the GST Hike only after the elections, and claimed that they only thought about it from the day after elections, and they had absolutely no intention of doing it beforehand. The most recent time they did it was regarding this issue, when they told us that civil servants would get a pay rise, only after the big hoo-hah over the GST issue had died down.

But fortunately, there are people like me, the purveyors of truth, seekers of justice, and champions of all that is sweet and juicy, who like to criticize others. Tremble in the shadow of my self-righteousness! Gaze with awe upon my cape of ego! Worship the soles of my sandals of tranquility!

So anyway, GST is collected from the people right? And the money goes to the government right? And civil servants work for the government right? And civil servants are getting a pay raise right? And ministers are civil servants right?

So, basically, we're paying more GST so that our various ministers can buy that 2nd or 3rd chauffeur-driven BMW that they so desperately need.

I'm not done yet. It also really irritates me that we, the people of Singapore, aren't given any say in this issue. None at all. Let's be clear, people who work for the government are civil servants. Since we (okay, my parents) pay taxes, I can come to the conclusion that Lee Hsien Loong works for me. So, in that case, since I'm the employer, I should be in charge right?
However, Singapore's servants aren't really treated like servants, in fact, it's more like the other way around. I mean, honestly, don't the citizens get a say at all? The way things are right now, its like having your maid telling you how much you're gonna pay her.

And what the hell happened to democracy? I don't know, but having someone tell you how things are going to be, and that you WILL accept it and be joyful and frolic in the meadow doesn't sound all that democratic to me. In fact, I would say it sounds, I don't know, more like fascism or a dictatorship.

If tomorrow, you read in the newspaper, that an ACJC student was run over by a brand new BMW, you will know why.

Farewell.

Labels:


Blogged @ 4:03 PM