Comments on Ravi Philemon: Workers' Party's proposal on Ministerial salaries ...

The safeguards in the Workersr' Party's pr...

2012-01-17T23:10:25.780+08:00

The safeguards in the Workersr' Party's proposal would be a good check against "conflict of interest", definitely much better than the current process - the "proposal" is done up by an 'independent' commission who proceed to submit the it to the PM who accepts it and then shows it to his own party BEFORE Parliament. The House then 'debate' 'passionately' and the PAP MPs ultimately endorses the proposal wholesale under the crack of the party whip.

http://yawshinleong.blogspot.com/2012/01/shin-leongs-speech-on-ministerial.html

The convoluted structure of the ministerial pay, with the many layers of bonuses, incidentallly mirrors the complex structure of our 'world class' taxi fares, with it's myriad quantum surcharges, that grew and flourish under the regulatory regime of the PAP government's free market system.

Not likely scenario for the govt to simply up the ...

2012-01-17T21:26:07.695+08:00

Not likely scenario for the govt to simply up the salaries of civil servants in order to benefit themselves. Civil service salaries are kept at a competitive rate with the private sector's. The mechanism cannot be so easily manipulated.

The civil service is the largest employer and if t...

2012-01-16T23:14:14.562+08:00

The civil service is the largest employer and if their pay is increase, the private sector would also be sucked into the wage spiral.... end result is all workers' salary (public or private) would rise in tandem with the politicians' manipulation to satisfy their greed. And in so doing make Singapore uncompetitive so be it...at least every citizen had a bite of the pie as we sink together with such folly.

While I agree the "benchmark" should be ...

2012-01-16T22:13:53.051+08:00

While I agree the "benchmark" should be simple, but I believe it should be broad base as well.

Pegging the root salary to the civil servant's pay will create a situation where conflicts of interests will be involved. i.e. ruling party could just increase civil servants' pay and in effect, increase their own pay as well, in multiple folds. This is not an objective peg.