Ramblings after May 7th

I've never really been into all this, but the events over the last few weeks culminating last saturday have left a slightly sour taste in my mouth.

I have always been neutral about the whole GRC thing, but the reality now is that a very good minister is out, and a very young girl is in.

Anyway, just my ramblings, don't want to say too much, this is a golf forum, I just needed to let something out somewhere.

How great it will be if a swap can be made!!!!!

I guess many Singaporean will rejoice!!!

Careful what you say, wait you get Stomped by the Kate Spade

well that's the consequence of the GRC system. PAP wants to play this game, they have to take the benefits and the risks.

if you listen carefully to the comments made by the various heavyweights, you'll notice the factions within

There has been much publicity in the media about the so called “growth dividend” in the recent Budget presented which hands out up to $800 to every voter. This handout amounts to $1.5 billion in total.
What followed was a torrent of propaganda to convince the people that the giveaways were generous and, to quote by Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, “more than what is required for lower- and middle-income households to tide over this temporary period of high inflation.”
But while the handouts are for us to tide over the high inflation we are facing (which are in fact inadequate), the Ministers are more than generous when it comes to their own handouts.
It looks like they are paying themselves an 8-month bonus. This payment is given in addition to their basic salaries, the Annual Wage Supplement (AWS, the 13th month payment) and their Performance Bonuses (PB).

Let us look at the way a minister’s pay is computed: The number of months for items 6 and 8 (see Table on right) have been determined and made public.

The PB, item 9, which can range between zero and 14 months of the salary, is a secretive component of the ministerial pay. It is determined solely by the Prime Minister and kept confidential as admitted by Foreign Minister George Yeo here.

In August 2009, the SDP wrote to the Public Service Division twice (see here and here) to inquire about the ministers’ performance bonuses, but was given evasive answers.

In a parliamentary session in January 2009, Minister Teo Chee Hean said that senior civil servant at the MR4 level (which includes junior ministers) received 9 months worth of PB in 2008. Now, the GDP growth in 2007 was 8.8%. The 8.8% growth must have been one of the indicators, if not the indicator, for the PB computation.

Last year GDP growth was 14.5%, a much higher rate than 2007. It is likely that the Prime Minister will heap on his and the ministers' platters a 14-month PB compared to the 9 months they received in 2008.

Nevertheless, I shall use a more conservative estimate of 10 months for the PB. I shall also use a more conservative estimate of 1 month for the SVP.

As you can see this gives each minister a whopping pay of 36.5 months for 2011!

In 2007, an MR4 officer received a basic monthly salary of $52,420. On top of that they were given another 18.4 months of bonuses pulling up their salaries to $1,593,500! That year, the Prime Minister received a total $3.09 million.

In 2008, their monthly salary was increased by 14%, making an MR4 officer’s basic monthly salary $60,000 and the Prime Minister’s $116,000. Tag on the multi-month bonuses and their annual wages again come up in the millions.

Based on this calculation, it is safe to assume that the annual salaries for ministers have not changed. A junior minister would get $2.19 million and the Prime Minister $4.23 million. This works out to about $360,000 a month in wages for Mr Lee Hsien Loong!

It was announced that Parliament had adjusted the President’s salary to S$4,267,500 for this year, confirming that my calculation is fairly close since the Prime Minister’s salary typically trails the President’s marginally.

Given this range, it is reasonable to assume that the average wage of a cabinet minister is about $3 million. Multiply it by 21 ministers in the cabinet and we are paying $63 million for the ministerial salaries.

This is 5.5% of the nation’s entire growth dividend.

All the while, there's only 2 ways ............ The Wrong Way, or My Way !!!!

slinger wrote:

There has been much publicity in the media about the so called “growth dividend” in the recent Budget presented which hands out up to $800 to every voter. This handout amounts to $1.5 billion in total.
What followed was a torrent of propaganda to convince the people that the giveaways were generous and, to quote by Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, “more than what is required for lower- and middle-income households to tide over this temporary period of high inflation.”
But while the handouts are for us to tide over the high inflation we are facing (which are in fact inadequate), the Ministers are more than generous when it comes to their own handouts.
It looks like they are paying themselves an 8-month bonus. This payment is given in addition to their basic salaries, the Annual Wage Supplement (AWS, the 13th month payment) and their Performance Bonuses (PB).

Let us look at the way a minister’s pay is computed: The number of months for items 6 and 8 (see Table on right) have been determined and made public.

The PB, item 9, which can range between zero and 14 months of the salary, is a secretive component of the ministerial pay. It is determined solely by the Prime Minister and kept confidential as admitted by Foreign Minister George Yeo here.

In August 2009, the SDP wrote to the Public Service Division twice (see here and here) to inquire about the ministers’ performance bonuses, but was given evasive answers.

In a parliamentary session in January 2009, Minister Teo Chee Hean said that senior civil servant at the MR4 level (which includes junior ministers) received 9 months worth of PB in 2008. Now, the GDP growth in 2007 was 8.8%. The 8.8% growth must have been one of the indicators, if not the indicator, for the PB computation.

Last year GDP growth was 14.5%, a much higher rate than 2007. It is likely that the Prime Minister will heap on his and the ministers' platters a 14-month PB compared to the 9 months they received in 2008.

Nevertheless, I shall use a more conservative estimate of 10 months for the PB. I shall also use a more conservative estimate of 1 month for the SVP.

As you can see this gives each minister a whopping pay of 36.5 months for 2011!

In 2007, an MR4 officer received a basic monthly salary of $52,420. On top of that they were given another 18.4 months of bonuses pulling up their salaries to $1,593,500! That year, the Prime Minister received a total $3.09 million.

In 2008, their monthly salary was increased by 14%, making an MR4 officer’s basic monthly salary $60,000 and the Prime Minister’s $116,000. Tag on the multi-month bonuses and their annual wages again come up in the millions.

Based on this calculation, it is safe to assume that the annual salaries for ministers have not changed. A junior minister would get $2.19 million and the Prime Minister $4.23 million. This works out to about $360,000 a month in wages for Mr Lee Hsien Loong!

It was announced that Parliament had adjusted the President’s salary to S$4,267,500 for this year, confirming that my calculation is fairly close since the Prime Minister’s salary typically trails the President’s marginally.

Given this range, it is reasonable to assume that the average wage of a cabinet minister is about $3 million. Multiply it by 21 ministers in the cabinet and we are paying $63 million for the ministerial salaries.

This is 5.5% of the nation’s entire growth dividend.

How true and sad. hiaz......

It is Singapore INC with an EGM every 5 years.

For the last 50yrs.... shareholders still voted in the "recommended" directors.

soli, i din write this.... just copy n paste

But still a good reminder lah.

my new idol!
yam ah mee!

Pursuant to Section 49, Subsection 7E, Paragraph A of the Parliamentary Elections Act, I declare 'Yah Ah Mee, Returning Officer Extraordinaire' as the page elected for the electoral division of The Yam Ah Mee's facebook domain.

This is 5.5% of the nation’s entire growth dividend.

one grey hair uncle say citizen not concern about their pay, i honestly doubt it. When it comes to 5-5-10, they are dead serious even for this.

from temasekreview:

http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/05/10/a-warning-not-a-mandate/#comment-390164

“Dear friends
A lawyer friend (whose name I have with-held) has given me the shocking answer to my query: Do retired ministers receive 50% of their last-drawn pay for life? (scroll down: be sure to read the text in bold especially).I also attach a copy of the Parliamentary Act so you know I am not making this up. Please spread this message by cutting and pasting the text below in a new email message and sending it to all your friends.Some people actually think our ministers only make $40,000 a month, hence are not bothered by our ministers’ pay. Some people think it’s okay for our ministers to quibble over $30 increase in subsidies to the poor!!
Regards
DO MINISTERS RECEIVE 50% OF THEIR LAST-DRAWN PAY FOR LIFE?
You friend is wrong about 50%. It is actually as high as 2/3rds. The Parliamentary Pensions Act provides that “office holders” (which means “Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker, Senior Minister, Minister, Senior Minister of State, Minister of State, Mayor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Parliamentary Secretary or Political Secretary”). If you closed your eyes and threw a stone in Parliament House during a Parliamentary sitting – assuming if, and it is a big if, that everyone attends (which is never the case. Parliamentary sittings are lucky if 50% of MPs attend!) you will hit at least 1 or perhaps 2 with the stone ricocheting PAP chaps entitled to pensions.
Anyhow, back to your question. The Act has a formula for payment of the amount of pension. You start with a numerator of 8 (meaning 8 years of service as office holder) and add 1 for every year of service after that. You divide this number by a fixed denominator of 27, and you stop when the number hits 2/3rds, which means that anyone who has 18 years service will hit maximum pension. The amount that is due to him FOR LIFE is found at section 4:
4(2) The annual amount of pension payable to an office-holding Member shall be —
(a) in respect of every completed year of reckonable service in any office, or where he has served in more than one office in each office, at the rate of one-twenty-seventh (1/27) of his annual salary in that office; and
(b) in respect of any remaining uncompleted year of reckonable service in any office, or where he has served in more than one office in each office, at the rate of one-three-hundred and twenty-fourth (1/324) part of his annual salary for each completed month of reckonable service in that office.
(2A) The annual pension payable to any office-holding Member under subsection (2) shall not exceed two-thirds of the highest annual salary of any office held by him.
(3) Subject to sections 13 and 15, a pension granted under this section shall continue for the life of the person to whom it is payable but shall not be payable in respect of any period during which he is again an office-holding Member; at the end of that period the pension shall again be payable and shall be re-computed with the addition of that period to the period of his former reckonable service as an office-holding Member.
(4) For the purposes of subsections (2) and (2A), “annual salary”, in relation to any office, means the annual equivalent of the highest monthly rate of salary (excluding any non-pensionable allowances) received by an office-holding Member during any period of reckonable service as a holder of that office.
Astonishing, isn’t it that the pension is payable based on the “Highest annual salary of any office held by him” and “highest monthly rate of salary”. So, it doesn’t matter that the MP was a low ranking parliamentary secretary for 17 years, and then became a multi-million $ minister for 1 year. His pension will be based on 2/3rds of his salary as a minister, as that is his highest annual salary of any office held by him. So, it also doesn’t matter that there are occasional reductions in salary during recessions, since their pension is based on their highest annual salary.
On this basis, SM / PM / MM will get 2/3rd x $3 million for the rest of their lives. I understand that if they are eligible for pension and they are still serving, they get both salary plus pension concurrently. (see section 5).
Or did I forget to tell you that pensions are exempt from income tax? This is stated in the Income Tax Act!
It gets better. The Act says that the pension can be commutated. This means that it is paid in 1 lump sum instead of monthly payments for life. The lump sum is equivalent to 175.14 months of pension, i.e. 14.6 years of pension. It doesn’t matter that the minister asks for it because he has terminal cancer and has 3 months to live. He will get 14.6 years of pension paid to him in 1 go, and it will be tax free. If MM’s pension is based on 2.5 million (conservative estimate), his commutated pension is $36.5 million. Can buy a GCB with it, without any bank loan!
This is a real scandal. I was horrified when Goh Chok Tong proposed recently that ministers serve 8 years only, and new ones come in. It means that the pool of multi-million dollar pension earners will get bigger and bigger! It will add to the financial burden of future generations of Singaporeans having to pay for the pensions of people who have already been paid too much during their terms of office.

Who in the private sector is entitled to pension? And yet the ministers, etc are collecting tax free pensions on top of their world’s highest salaries. Now you know why George Yeo is fighting so hard to keep his job as minister.
Incidentally, all Admin Service officers, Sr Police & Military Officers and High Court Judges are still entitled to pensions in the same manner. No one else in the Civil Service gets pensions.

Pension is the idea of the old world where people spend their entire lives in a single job. If the trend is that all or majority of our ministers dedicate their entire lives to serve the people and have not have more than one job i.e. Directorship, majority shareholdings etc etc, then the logic still applies and the pension is fair. You serve the company ur whole life and the company take care of u till u die.

However, i think many of our govt got do other job before like work in ntuc or the army etc etc for a big part of their work life before join govt.

tats the prerequsites if you want pension

ok. my time to vent now. this is taken off my twitter timeline; http://twitter.com/#!/mUAr_cHEe

> really do not understand why residents are complaining since they have voted otherwise. as for the opposition, man up and walk the talk.

> didn't they think it through properly before they voted. stop whining, look out across the borders and see how good we got it.

> Look at this. http://t.co/HaSEofh Don't tell me to compare apples to apples. Aren't Thais Human as well? & u are whining about no support?

>it really pisses me off. especially when the MEN are complaining about it. Didn't NS teach u all anything?


Now just waiting for the replies...

COM'ON!!! I am sure someone disagrees with me!!!