Charity?

Donating the excess don't seem noble to me. It seems more like a wayang show to gain political points. I am sure many singaporeans would view this act with the same skeptic specs. If he is truly noble, then he should really freeze his pay instead of donating his pay increase. Really look into the problems or the poor and use the amount saved from the pay to fund the poor. All the GDP growth are from policies that squeeze the poor and put the low income labour out of job. All the stellar reports of growth materialised at the expense of the low skilled singapoeran workers. I wonder is it too much to give a portion of what was taken away back to them? Should the poor be sacrificing so that ministers can benefit more with higer GDP growth?

It makes no sense to pay the ministers more. Did we employ ministers with integrity? If yes, then would they be tempted if they are paid the same? Again, did we employ talented ministers? If yes, then why do we need to pay more. Do you mean that their talents is proportional to the pay received? If the ministers leave because of money then is it worth it to retain the minister? Furthermore, I am not sure if the minister can leave before his term end. If he cannot leave them why increase the salary? If he leaves I think we should just let him go because talent is not more important than dedication and loyalty.

Acting as the guardians of the 210 billion reserves, their eyes should not be on how much money they can make with 210 billion for themselves, but how they can use the money to benefit the country. If we just want to earn money we might as well do away with the ministers and get fund managers in to do the job. I am sure they can do a much better job than our talented ministers.

I guess money is singapore's god.

special formula for MR4?

The special benchmark is not a benchmark after all. It is not the maximum pay they can get but a factor of what they can get. So how many peanuts are they getting???? We have no idea what special formula they are using. So if the benchmark is 1.2 mil and our MM, SM and PM are drawing more than 2.2 mil, raising the benchmark together with the nebulous formula would make their basic pay 4-5 mil. 12-15 mil for 3 talents????? Well done!

Talent?

What kind of talents are we really getting and retaining? I don't think our ministers are talented. They are efficient task managers but when it comes to politics they don't seem to have a clue on how to engage our citizens.

They are not talented creators who come out with unique systems that balances economy and social concerns. They always give the inevitability of globalisation without thinking of a solution. Status quo is good for them because it really doesn't affect them that much.

How to make profits in the company?? Cut cost. How to do that?? Pay the labourers peanuts so the bottom line looks good. When the bottom line looks good cream it off for yourselves as performance bonus. Seems like Singapore is almost addicted to this style of management. Perhaps the world is also doing that. GST for the poor or the rich I wonder? To me that is interest free loan from the citizens of Singapore.

Coming back to talent, the singapore ministers lack the communications skills. They are not talented politicians because they never have to sell an idea to the singaporeans. All they need to do is to annouce the change and put up a wayang debate. The debate is given limited coverage and often issues are not properly addressed due to time constrains. There is a lack of sincerity in the debate but what is new? I can only say that our government lacks opposition to sharpen their skills. They get away with reasoning that a simple peasant like me can see the faults of the argument. As lucky tan would say, they have a superior logic that only the elites can understand.

So really what kind of talent are we attracting and looking at?

the SPECULATIVE reason why minister needs to increase pay

Ok the ministers retires and moves to the GLC drawing CEO pays double that of the ministers in cabinet. So if they have that option of moving to GLC and drawing bigger pay why not????? The government has created a problem doing that and to solve the problem, pay more so that the option of moving to a GLC wouldn't be more attractive than staying. In a way the leaking talent problem is caused by their own appointment of ex ministers to GLC.

The question is when these talents leaks to GLC, are they worth keeping? If they see no difference between serving their country and getting a cushy job in GLC are we getting the right kind of talent in the first place.