See my blog entries on Ministerial salaries HERE, HEREand HERE.
The points I was trying to make with these blog posts are that:
1. The fundamental for pegging the salaries of the Ministerial to the private sector is flawed.
2. The salaries of political office holders should be pegged to the salaries of Members of Parliament.
3. The Ministerial salaries must be uncluttered with unnecessary components like 'National Bonus'.
What I did with the second blog entry was to try and peg the MP's salary appropriately (to that of the employed households), so that the other political office holders salaries could be appropriately pegged to this figure.
But now after hearing all sides of the argument (SDP, NSP, PAP, WP and various voices from the blogosphere), I agree that we need not have complicated formulas for pegging the MP's salary. I agree with the Workers' Party's proposal that the Ministers salaries should be pegged to multiples of the MP's salary; and that the MP's salary pegged to the starting salary of entry-grade senior civil servants in the regular civil service.
The starting salary of entry-grade senior civil servants in the regular civil service — a director of MX9 grade in the Management Executive Scheme of the civil service (outside of the Administrative Service) is approximately $11,000 a month.
In our proposal, MP allowance would be about $11,000 per month, Ministerial salary would range from $55,000 per month for entry-grade ministers to $99,000 per month for the Prime Minister.
WP's proposal would mean that an entry-level Minister would draw an annual salary of $715,000 ($55,000 X 13 months), while the Prime Minister will draw $1,278,000.
This would be quite close to the numbers I specified in the blog entry suggesting that an entry-level Minister be paid $724,750 and the Prime Minister $1,207,908.
1 month annual variable component and 2 months' performance bonuses (tied to Real Median Income Growth Rate, Real Growth Rate of the Lowest 20th Percentile Income, Unemployment Rate and Real GDP Growth Rate) could also be paid in addition to these salaries (this would mean that an entry-level Minister's salary would be in the range of $715,000 - $880,000; and the Prime Ministers salary would range from $1,207,908 - $1,584,000).
This would be a cleaner wage than that suggested by the Ministerial Salary Review Committee as it would not be cluttered with so many unnecessary components like 'National Bonus'.
More than the amount, the peg suggested by the Workers' Party will ensure that the fundamentals of Ministerial salaries remain right, with the emphasis being on public service.
A friend wrote on his Facebook, "As Singapore is no longer the "impregnable fortress" it was perceived to be, it is like any other cosmopolitan city with transport, employment, municipal, drainage, etc problems. Hence, I agree that we should also compare with other countries of similar size and density."
Yup, this post is about the Ministerial Salary Review Committee's report (see HERE).
When you take away the 8 months bonus assumption (13 month + 1 month annual variable component + 3 months performance bonus + 3 months National Bonus), the Ministerial salary review actually looks more acceptable.
For example, if you take away the bonus assumption, the salary recommendation for the Parliamentary Secretary is $20,900 per month, and the Prime Minister's salary recommendation is $110,000 per month.
Even if these still seem like HUGE amounts, anyone with a sense of proportion would tell you that when measured against the responsibility these individuals hold, the amount would be fair compensation.
It is the 8 months bonus which makes these (otherwise well thought out) Ministerial Salary Review recommendations out of whack.
I still remember as a young boy, in the 70s, waiting for more than an hour for the bus to arrive. I also remember that if you wanted to go to Sembawang (where some of my father's friends lived), there were no bus services.
In the 80s, I was in secondary school, and I remember the transition from a two-man operating system to the one-man-operating system and finally to the cashless system. The buses were often late and when they arrived, they were crowded.
When the trains finally arrived in the mid 80s, it was a wish come true! We had air-conditioned public transport. There were places to sit. But most of all we zipped through from point A to point B quite quickly. Suddenly there was a quantum leap in Singapore's transport capacity.
The effective and efficient trains were symbolic of Singapore. There was a certain pride in calling yourself a Singaporean - a city which had the will to make quantum leaps.
Fast-forward to the year 2011. 'Competition' injected into the public transport system by the government - to ensure that the public transport operators would not fall into inefficient operations and to minimise wastage - had spiralled out of control, because there was no real competition. The public transport operators operated like unregulated monopolies in their areas of operation. The PTOs quest for profit maximisation probably led to SMRT losing its "core competency in the management of train network while it was developing new and alternative revenue streams" (see Kumaran Pillai's speech).
"This is the reason why the profits of the two operators have risen manifold since 2003. In 2003, SMRT’s profit was $72 million, as at 31 March 2011, SMRT’s net-profit was $161.1 million. Comfort DelGro’s profit in 2003 was $134 million, its net-profit was $228.5 million, as at 31 December 2010.
Despite these high incomes, generated by the PTO, PTC has never not approved applications for fare adjustments by the PTO. PTC has been heavily criticised repeatedly because of this and also because the regulator is perceived to be more pro-PTO than pro-commuters.
For example, commuters who do not pay the correct fare on public transports, will be fined S$20, while those who abuse concession cards face a penalty of S$50. An additional penalty of S$1,000 will be imposed if the cheating commuter does not pay the fine; and repeat offenders may be fined S$2,000 or be jailed up to six months, or both.
These penalties are many times more than the value of a single trip on the public transport, and it is meant as a deterrent for the fare cheats.
The PTO however have no such effective deterrent for failing Quality of Services (QoS) standards. The penalty for each non-compliant day on each non-compliant route for both headway adherence and loading is only $100; which means that it is more profitable for the PTO to breach QoS standards instead of investing in capacity/infrastructure to meet QoS requirements.
The PTO have enjoyed the carrot, but have never enjoyed the stick of punitive sanctions." - TOC Editorial dated 26 July 2011
From 2010, there have been over 40 disruptions in train services. Vandals had broken into SMRT train depot to vandalise the trains on two occasions, raising concerns of security. SMRT has never taken responsibility for any of these failures. In fact, SMRT has tried to shift the blame to the security company when they were questioned for the security lapse in their depot.
The question TOC editorial raised in July 2011 seems louder today, “Why are Quality of Service standards not linked to fare increases?”
In light of all these serious lapses in Quality of Service (QoS) standards by SMRT, the Public Transport Council (PTC) should reverse the 1 per cent fare increase they approved in August of this year. PTC should also tie future fare increases to QoS standards. And all future fare revisions must be tied to QoS standards.
TOC's head of Chinese section, Goh Meng Seng, said on his Facebook that SMRT perhaps spends only about 8 per cent of their revenue on repair and maintenance, while train service operators in other countries spend about 18 - 30 per cent of their profits for this. There is an absolute necessity for SMRT to give the people of Singapore a full accounting of what it spends on maintenance. SMRT must also release its maintenance records for the last 5 years with comparison to industry standards.
Why do I say that the story of the SMRT is the story of Singapore? Because the early leaders of the country put in place various rigorous systems for governing the nation, and the leaders who came after them assumed that these systems are fool-proof; that you only need to put in place trusted aides to maintain these systems and everything will be fine.
From Mas Selamat to the flooding; and now with the serious failure of the mass rapid transit system, we know now that these assumptions are flawed.
But the real sad news is that almost everybody seems to have no courage to say that 'the emperor has no clothes'. At the media interview with Saw Phaik Hwa a couple of days ago, it was a journalist from the foreign media who asked her if she would resign. The reporters from the local media were all too happy to print her response without asking her all the hard questions.
The trust in the infallibility of the old systems is so deep that it seems to have contributed to the lack of regulatory oversight. I mean, how can the Transport Minister say, "I do not know if these are isolated incidents or whether there are systemic and more serious underlying issues causing these breakdowns." How could he not know?
It is the safety and the health of the commuters that are at risk! A TOC reader wrote to us that her heavily pregnant sister-in-law was trapped in the train for 45 minutes. Two were hospitalised. Countless others were trapped in a train with no lights and no ventilation. People are walking on the train tracks...
This is not the Singapore I know! These trusted aides who are not doing what they ought to be doing have (in the words of a friend), "contributed to the system rot and atrophy".
Somebody must take responsibility for the failure of SMRT. At the media conference on Friday, SMRT's CEO, Ms Saw said that she will see to it that there will not be a recurrence of such breakdowns. But on Saturday morning, there was another such recurrence and services were disrupted from Ang Mo Kio to Marina Bay.
The CEO of SMRT must do the right thing, take responsibility for the failures of SMRT and resign. Her resignation will be highly symbolic and will go a long way in restoring the confidence of the people in the system - not just the MRT system.
And while they are at it, SMRT should not only refund the fares of the commuters who are affected by their service disruptions on Thursday and Saturday; they should also (as Eric Tan rightly pointed out in his speech today) give free, complimentary rides to all the affected commuters for one whole month.
When TOC first received the email about Seng Han Thong's comment past 6pm on Wednesday, 21 November, we were not sure if an MP would really make such a comment. The exact words used by the contributor were, " During the (BlogTV) episode, he (Seng Han Tong) commented that the reason why SMRT has a lack of communication between its ground staff and commuters was due to the Malay and Indian staffs having a poor command of the English language."
We asked the contributor if the exact video could be pointed out to us. The video pointed out was a CNA one which was embedded in Microsoft's Silverlight software. The video being available in this format made rewinding and listening to the exact words spoken that much difficult. (The Youtube version of the BlogTV programme only became available much later.)
In the end, we could not decide if Mr Seng had used the word "PR" and if he had, was he referring to his own PR or the PR department of SMRT. So we decided to err on the side of caution and publish that Mr Seng had said "some staffs are “Malay(s), they are Indians, they cannot converse in English good, well enough”."
One reason we did that was because with the recent failures of SMRT, we did not want the general public to be incensed unnecessarily towards the staff of SMRT. In this instance the staff of the PR department of the SMRT. We were angry with management of SMRT for the service lapse, but we are 100 per cent behind the SMRT workers. The disruptions were not their fault and we also mentioned that in our rally at the Speakers' Corner recently.
We reasoned that if he was quoting someone else, Mr Seng would write to us to clarify or post somewhere the accurate version, and when he did that we would put it up on our website. TOC did exactly that when Mr Seng later clarified that what he had actually said was, “I notice that the PR mention that, some of the staff, because they are Malay, they are Indian, they can’t converse in English good, well enough, so that also deters them, from but I think we accept broken English.”
There was absolutely no intention to do a (as Dr Cherian George says in his blogpost), "sensational report on what a PAP MP said". With the recent fiasco of SMRT, (if TOC was going for the sensational) it would have been more sensational to direct the anger at SMRT - never mind if it was the management or the staff. TOC did not do that!
Also TOC did not set-out to mislead the general public by omitting what Mr Seng said. We embedded the CNA video and left a time reference to the exact point at which Mr Seng's comments appeared.
With the benefit of hind sight, how TOC kept the article relevantly updated was good because the outrage did not become focused on the workers of SMRT.
TOC chose not to make any assumptions with reporting the article. Dr George however assumed that Mr Seng's "slip could have been due to political naivety rather than racism"; and in the first draft of the article (which is still available here), Dr George wrote, “As he spoke, he waved at the laptop screen facing the panelists, which presumably displayed comments from viewers. Seen in context, Seng was quoting the comment as part of a larger point he was making, that SMRT should have proper SOPs in place, and that in an emergency the drivers’ standard of English is no excuse for silence.”
I have been a part of TOC since August 2008, and I know that TOC is not always right. But we try to do what's right. In this issue, after the report went up, TOC published the clarification by Mr Seng (as an update to the same article), then we updated it with his apology. Then we further updated it with SMRT's response. Whenever we did an update we linked the update on our Facebook so that our readers could be appropriately informed. With all these care taken in reporting this story, Dr George still calls TOC reporting "loose" in his blog post today.
Well, TOC did not muddy the water by making unwanted assumptions. We don't have a need to paint Mr Seng as a racist. When we could not accurately verify what Mr Seng said, we chose to err on the side of caution.
And as it turned out, TOC did not misrepresent Mr Seng at all. SMRT in their statement on the episode that at no point did SMRT highlight any particular race was highlighted when SMRT tried to explain the challenges the organsiation faced in trying to train its drivers to make announcements, as not all of them are comfortable speaking in English.
The following is my view on what the ministerial salary revision should look like and is calculated by using the table above as the base (the table is found HERE).
The MPs monthly salary should be calculated by averaging:
1 - 10th of Employed Household by Decile: $1400
41 - 50th of Employed Household by Decile: $5888
91 - 100th of Employed Household by Decile: $23684
(1400+5888+23684)/3 = $10324
Annual income: $10324 X 13 months = $134,212
The monthly salary for Ministers and Senior Parliamentary Secretaries
should be calculated by multiplying $10324 (salary for MPs) by the average of
real annual change in percentages for the:
1 - 10th of Employed Household by Decile: 4.9%
41 - 50th of Employed Household by Decile: 7.1%
91 - 100th of Employed Household by Decile: 4.1%
4.9+7.1+4.1 = 5.4%
10324
X 5.4 = $55750
Annual income: $55750 X 13 months = $724,750
The
monthly salary for Administrative officers at SR9superscale gradeshould
be calculated by dividing 5.4% by 3 = 1.8%, and multiplying it by $10,324 = $18,583.
Annual
income for AOs at SR9 grade: $18583 X 13 = $241,579
The monthly
salary for the Prime Ministershould be calculated as
such:
(1.8 X 2) +5.4 = 9%
$10324 X 9 = $92,916
Annual
income for the Prime Minister: $92916 X 13 = $1,207,908
The monthly
salary for the President should be calculated as follows:
($92916 X 14)/13 =
$100,063
Annual
income for the President: $1,300,819
On top of this the MPs, AOs, Ministers, PM and President should also receive bonuses that are not higher than 3 times their monthly salary, reflecting the strength of the economy, as well as the performance and prospects of the nation in GDP, productivity growth, consumer price index and other relevant indicators.
Although PA's grassroots organisations are supposedly separate and independent from the PAP, many grassroots leaders are also PAP branch activists, and the PAP's defeat affected grassroots work in the GRC.
Former PAP chairman Lim Boon Heng said in an e-mail to The Straits Times that 'after the May GE, there was a slowdown in (grassroots) activities. In some parts of Aljunied GRC, it has been less than what we normally expect post-elections'.
Last week, The Straits Times reported that Mr Lim was assembling a PAP task force to 'take back' Aljunied GRC for the ruling party. He is also a special adviser to the chairman of the PA, who is Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Mr Lim said he is working on ensuring that 'there is no let-up' in Aljunied GRC when it comes to grassroots activities, in the face of some grassroots advisers stepping down.
'We will appoint new advisers. These will be people who can fill that role, not necessarily politician-wannabes.'
I helped Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss in her campaign in Mountbatten in the last General Election. There were many memorable moments and many invaluable lessons I learnt while helping her in her campaign. But one incident which stands out in my mind is the encounter with a People's Association (PA) leader from Mountbatten.
It was still early days and nomination papers have not yet been filed. But there was a lot of buzz that Jeannette was going to contest Mountbatten. A group of us met at the void deck of a block in Jalan Batu to discuss her campaign and after the discussion we walked to the hawker centre at Blk 4A for some snacks. As we were walking towards the hawker centre, Jeannette spotted someone she recognised (someone known to some of her family members as well) and stopped to greet him. The person was a PA leader for that constituency. He was wearing a PA T-shirt (red part added on 8/12/11 for clarity).
After asking her how she was, he said to her, "your mother is so proud of you. She keeps telling everyone that you are contesting in Mountbatten as an opposition candidate. But why are you contesting in Mountbatten? Lim Biow Chuan is a very good MP. You should consider contesting in some other wards where there are no good MPs" (paraphrased)
I was shocked! Here was a person from People's Association, which is supposed to be apolitical and he is openly campaigning for a PAP MP! And worse, he was asking someone not to contest in that area and so have a walkover (at least that's the message I got).
And today we read this piece of news from ST. Lim Boon Heng is a special advisor to the Chairman of PA (PM Lee Hsien Loong) and he is unashamedly going to use a tax-payer funded statutory board for a political purpose - to fight another political party.
Here we have the Workers' Party playing football with the incumbents to show that they will not oppose for the sake of opposing, and then you have someone like Teo Ser Luck (playing on the same team) who has said that he will "step into the breach" in Aljunied and with the help of the well-funded People's Association hope to unseat Workers' Party from that constituency.
Well you know what...for a start, I think the MPs from Workers' Party should stop playing soccer with these guys from the PAP. The PAP has absolutely no concept about fairness and no guilt-feelings whatsoever in using the institutions of the State for its own political advantage.
UPDATE: Competition Commission has responded to my complaint and I reproduce it in full here:
CCS Feedback (CCS)
Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 2:16 PM
To: XXX
Dear Mr. Ravi Philemon,
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.
2. CCS does not comment on individual cases because every CCS’ determination or finding is possible only after a thorough investigation of the detailed circumstances of each case. Neither does it comment on whether it is investigating a case. Having said that, CCS reiterates that price-fixing among businesses is illegal and opens them up to investigations and possible financial penalties under the Competition Act. Businesses are, however, free to determine their own prices independently. Trade or industry associations should not become the vehicle to facilitate price collusion or price-fixing.
3. CCS advises businesses and associations to familiarise themselves with the Competition Act which sets out the types of behaviour that are prohibited because they are considered to be anti -competitive. Any body or person who wants to know whether a specific behaviour is considered anti -competitive should seek legal advice, or file a notification for guidance or decision with CCS.
Thank you.
Regards
Pwee Inn
--
I lodged the following complain with Competition Commission Singapore against National Taxi Association's anti-competitive behaviour:
In their debate on the President's Speech in October, the Workers' Party (Chairman Sylvia Lim), raised this with the government of Singapore:
In July this year, Bhutan initiated a resolution at the UN General Assembly titled “Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development”. There were a total of 66 co-sponsors of the resolution and the General Assembly adopted it without a vote.
The resolution’s preamble states that “the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal”, and that “the gross domestic product indicator by nature was not designed to and does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being of people in a country.”
Member states have been invited “to pursue the elaboration of additional measures that better capture the importance of the pursuit of happiness and well-being in development with a view to guiding their public policies.”
With such international interest, is it now time for Singapore’s government to conspicuously focus on happiness as a national goal? Should policies be articulated to show how they will ultimately achieve happiness for Singaporeans as a whole?
Since TOC published Donaldson's story, some 'people' have been private messaging me on Facebook. They have all spoken up for Serena Lee the person highlighted in TOC's article (see HERE) and have chided Jewel (the writer of the article) and me for publishing the article without fact-checking.
The first 'person' to private message me was Andrea Tan:
I replied to her that TOC only reported from the police report (of which we have a copy). TOC also has a policy to give the person we write about, the right of reply, if they feel that they have been wrongly misrepresented or maligned in our article. For the record, Serena Lee did not contact me in any way (or TOC) to express her displeasure.
What has happened instead is 'various people' have gone on various platforms to speak up against Jewel, me and TOC. I am fine with differences of opinion, which is why after making clarifications on the matter on Gwee Li Sui's wall, I did not try to defend myself.
I also tried to find out who some of commenters on Gwee's wall were and instead of sending a note which could be misinterpreted, decided to see if I could initiate a face-to-face meeting with them. I called the organisation listed in one of the commenter Elle-Bee Tan's FB wall (which is public information) 'Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory' but the CEO of the organisation Dr Michael Chee said that there was no such person there.
Then this morning, I had a FB note from one Danny Tan (who I do not know), and he said:
"Do heed my gentle advice as this matter will not go away until the good reputation of the individuals are sincerely repaired. There are many of us who support Serena and know she is anything but a Muslim basher and she stated quite clearly that though she was anti-theism for the violence occuring in the world as a result, she was not anti-theists.
One suspects that in your daughter's lazy reporting and her ignorance, led her to utterly and completely fail to recognise the seriousness of her boldness, believing that generating traffic superceded that of journalistic integrity.
Worse, TOC editors still left the article there quoting Serena completely out of context up until this very moment.
Many screenshots have been taken and circulated and with the help of the many enemies that TOC has made and the secular community, this matter will not go away until an apology is issued."
I offered to meet him in person to hear him out, which he declined. The subsequent conversation between us is below:
Then, later today I had the most worrying FB note from one Audrey Tan, which is below:
'She' threatened to lift pictures of my daughter's FB page, doctor them and release them on the internet unless I took down the article where Serena is mentioned in TOC and Jewel issued a public apology. 'She' also commented on Gwee Li Sui's wall that "we must shame Ravi and his daughter".
I was very alarmed and making a police report crossed my mind. But I thought I should 'walk the talk'. We so often talk about community moderation on the internet. I hope the blogging community would come out and censure these 'people'.
So far, only Alfian Sa'at has called them out. Of course I have had phone calls of support and private messages on FB. But for such cyber-bullying to stop, people must come out openly and condemn such acts. I am made of tougher-material (my daughter too) and we can withstand such attacks. I shudder to think what it would have been if it was another person.
Jewel and I are real people, with real faces. You can call us, meet us and talk to us in person. We are not cyber-trolls and certainly do not hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Should we now cower in fear because of these threats and make our FB profile and pictures private?
No, we will not do that! We have confidence in the ability of the online world of Singapore, to do the right thing.
But of course, I will also reserve my right to take appropriate action (legal included) if this cyber-bullying gets out of hand.
--
The full conversation between Donaldson, Amran, Serene and others on the racially offensive 're-post' is HERE.
-- Update: Serena Lee has since PMed me and our conversation is here:
Since New Asia Republic has published this article (see HERE), I think that it's important that I say the circumstances under which TOC decided to publish the article 'Racist posts on FB by blogger – police investigates'.
On 20 November, Amran who is a personal friend PMed me on FB and asked if I knew Donaldson and if I'd advise him to take down the offensive picture. He also said, "I really don't want him to get into any trouble, not at this period of time.
Tried talking to him but he stand on his believe that he has the right to post things on his wall and that if I don't like it I can take out myself from being his FB friend".
By the time I saw the PM and tried to refer to the offensive picture, FB had already deleted it. Even if FB had deleted the offensive picture, Donaldson had continued to post insensitive comments on his FB justifying his right to post what he did.
When friends cautioned him against such postings and requested him to apologise for bad judgment on his part for re-posting that picture, Donaldson defended his action by continuing to say insensitive things about a particular religion. Although later Donaldson came out to say that he was only "whistle-blowing" and that some others who are Muslims had also posted the same picture on their Facebook but were not accused of trying to create ill will; but when a non-Muslim like him does it, he is accused of inflaming anti-Islam sentiments.
On late Monday afternoon, Amran notified TOC that he had made a police report. When I asked him why he did so, he said that he did it out of frustration as Donaldson continued to offend Islam even after the picture was taken down.
So with a lot of deliberation on the consequences of reporting something like this, TOC decided to go ahead and report it as it is. The main reason TOC decided to publish it was because we considered if we were not to publish that a blogger had offended religious sensitivities, when we had published earlier that a YPAP member and a national serviceman had done so, would it be construed that we were trying to protect one of our own (as Donaldson was formerly a TOC editor)?
Jewel, my daughter is a writer in her own right. I wonder what was the necessity to inject in the NAR article that she is my daughter, except maybe to flame her and me along with her. She only reported the facts, as they were given to her, and NAR being a group blog should know that whatever writers write, has got to be edited (and we adopted the most stringent standard for articles of this nature). So, she is not entirely responsible for the article. The editorial team is equally responsible.
The suggestion in the NAR article that TOC should not report on the article because investigation is ongoing is ingenuous because the media (not just TOC) have reported in the past that police investigations are ongoing in certain cases. An example being Tin Pei Ling being investigated for flouting election regulations (see HERE).
So is the writer from NAR suggesting that TOC should not have reported on Donaldson until investigations are concluded because he is a fellow-blogger, when anyone else including PAP members and national servicemen are fair-game for such reporting?
NAR to suggest in their article that the police reports were politically motivated by a certain opposition political party is even more worrying. Already, the Government is using cases like Donaldson's as an excuse to regulate the internet (see HERE), and now aspersions are cast on opposition political parties - that they practice divisive politics.
The question I have for the other editors of NAR is, did they advise Donaldson to moderate his FB 're-post' considering the ill-will it will generate for NAR? Those in the core team of TOC for example are very careful what we post in our own personal FB, for we are aware that readers will associate personal leanings to official positions. Also, who is 'Jay Sus' (the original poster of the picture)?
But having said all this, let me say here that I do not think that Donaldson is a racist. He could be an idiot - but certainly not a racist. I also certainly do not think that a police report should have been lodged against Donaldson. If Amran had asked me before he made that report if he should do it, I would have advised him against it.
Let me quote the NAR article on what I think about the article on NAR which prompted me to write this blog post - "what separates good editors from the bad ones is the ability to judge which stories deserve the light of the day, and which to turn away or keep in view". .
