Try a different thinking cap

While the Salary Review Committee is thinking, perhaps there should be a rethink on the underlying assumptions for the high ministerial salaries. One key component that was built into the salary is the amount to prevent ministers from being corrupt. The ministers’ salaries thus consist of a normal salary plus a corruption prevention factor that is undefined. Knowing how bad corruption can be at high places, the amount in consideration cannot be small to be effective. There are only 15 ministers plus another few ministers of state and parliamentary secretaries. The total would not be too big a number to monitor for corruption. Maybe we can take a different approach to this corruptibility issue. Remove the corruption prevention component, say X dollars from the pay check. Let those ministers or people in high offices try to be corrupt and let the CPIB go after them and make them pay for their bad behaviors. This approach could put to test how many genuinely good men we have and how many would turn bad. And the amount of savings can be quite substantial if the $X is big. Assuming this is $1m a year per minister, multiply by say 30, to include the other office bearers, and spread it to 50 or 100 years, my god, it is no small change. In practice, I don’t think there will be so many corrupt ministers to pilfer so much money from the system and without being caught. This is a worthwhile experiment to try. From the money to be saved point of view, it definitely makes sense. Another option is to declare the quantum provided to prevent corruption. The ministers may opt to accept this quantum to free them from the temptation. Those ministers who are confident that they will not be tempted even without this sum of compensation can opt out of it. In this way, the more righteous and upright ministers need not be forced to accept this sum of immoral money which they did not want in the first place. There will still be huge savings as many ministers are likely to refuse to accept such compensation and be seen as corruptible. You see, the rationale for this corruption prevention pay is pretty humiliating and self serving as it implies that none of them can stand firmly on the ground and resist the temptation to become corrupt. So the good ones too become tarred by accepting the payout. Time to take a new look at the rationale and a new approach to the tackling the problem of corruption.

Socialising and acclimatising the foreigners

Lately the vigour to welcome the foreigners has been neglected with focus turned to the election. Now that it is over, maybe this exercise to welcome and socialize the foreigners will take off again. I have just one suggestion to the committees organizing such programmes. And this is from the experiences of the past when the sinkehs were arriving in their cargo ships in the last century. When the early sinkehs came to this island, they were taken care of by their clansmen and they helped them to adapt and acclimatize to the local environment. Coming from temperate countries, the tropical heat can be killing. One of the mandatory rituals is to make them take early morning bath. This is to protect them from heatstroke. The side benefits were personal hygiene which actually was not of much concern in those days. Poor labourers were not too perturbed by dirty places and their sweaty and smelly bodies. They slept anywhere, wore clothes for days and bathing and washing to keep clean were furthest in their minds. Today, many new arrivals are still not conscious of their personal hygiene, the students, and the office workers included. From the smell you know that they have not taken their bath for days, or at best, in the morning before leaving for work. Imagine squeezing with them in the packed trains and buses. For goodness sake, all the programme coordinators incharge of foreigners, please do just one thing. Teach them to take bath daily, and the most important one, before leaving for work. It is not only healthy, it not only reduces heat stroke, it keeps them clean and not smelly. The locals cannot or would not want to talk to them or get near to them if the stench is unbearable. And it can become offensive and invite a negative feeling towards them. A clean and not smelling body will make them more pleasant and people will not avoid them. I have no intention to be rude. But I cannot help but to pinch my nose when the body odour from unwashed bodies is too offensive. I hope this message gets through. I want to be nice and polite to them too. I have to say it because many are suffering in silence and cursing behind their backs. PS. Wally should be happy with this.

Why are the people questioning govt policies?

The noise is getting louder. The people, well known to be daft, are questioning govt policies formulated by the top talents of the island. They are openly criticizing the high ministers’ salaries, the high public housing prices, the high influx of foreigners. My advice to the people is not to go over board. These are well though out policies that were good for the country and themselves. Without these policies in place, the island would have long turned into a big slum. It is time that they think deeply, if they can think at all, and say a big thank you for their good fortune. Don’t they want to have jobs? Don’t they want their property prices to keep going up? They need them for their retirement and to pay for world class hospital bills. Say thank you please.

More foreigners snapping up private properties

Is this news? It does not take much to buy up this piece of rock. And if the property market is open to foreigners all over the world, what is there to stop them from throwing their spare cash to wipe up everything? The foreigners in this case are the super rich, and there will always be the super rich. Let’s take a bet when the whole island will be sold to foreigners, I mean the private properties.

Different views on the ministers’ salaries

Even when Hsien Loong appointed a review committee to look at the ministers’ salaries, an indirect admission that something is not right, there are still some quarters willing to accept what it is. A letter in the ST forum talks about provisions of KPIs and measuring performance to justify the loony salaries. Really, if you let the loonies do what they want, they will pay themselves not just a few millions, but tens or hundreds of millions. I called them robbers. They are found mainly in New York where the top executives of the financial industries are exactly doing that. Even the CEO of the stock exchange was grabbing hundreds of millions at one time. There are no jobs, I mean as an employee drawing a salary, that should be paid hundreds of thousands a month except in gambling or maybe in sales. Leave aside the specialized skills, especially those involving life and death, when the practitioner can demand anything under the sky if there is a willing customer to pay for it. How could a CEO whose tasks are mainly administrative and decision making justify a $500k or $1m salary a month? Oh, his decision involves millions and billions. So by saying yes or no to billions, he must be paid a percentage of it? This has been a key justification so far. There will be different views on this. Fair enough, if the decision is right, he gets his percentage cut. What if it is wrong, is he willing to cough out a percentage of the mistake? The other justification is always the market. Let the market forces decide. Shouldn’t that be the case? In the case of political offices, there is an international market that could be used to give a reference point, at least on the upper limits and lower limits. Why is this not used? No matter how exceptional, how unique, no one in his right mind will think it is not loony to pay the head of govt in a little piece of rock more than the head of the US or any major developed country. Our talents are super talents, world best? I have no delusion about that. Our problems are exceptional and demanded extraordinary human feats. I too have no delusion about that. While the two camps are throwing out their views in the media, new media versus old media, we will have to wait for the Review Committee for their recommendations. In the meantime the supporters of loony salaries will get their views heard. The detractors too will know where they can get their views published and heard.