DO YOU KNOW???

DO YOU KNOW???

"Mr Steve Chia Kiah Hong: Clarification from the Minister.
Does any serving minister who turns 55 actually receive both salary and pension at the same time? If yes, should he be serving? Mr Lee Hsien Loong: I believe the answer is yes.

That is the rule for the civil service, and the ministers follow the civil
service rules." (Source: Parliamentary Debates, 2004) -
Yawning Bread, link - http://www.yawningbread.org/

To: MM Lee Kuan Yew
cc: PM Lee Hsien Loong
cc: SM Goh Chok Tong
cc: President Nathan
cc: REACH
cc: Straits Times/ Today/TNP
cc: International news agencies
cc: Opposition MPs/NCMP/NMPs
cc: Others

4 Apr 2007

Dear Minister Mentor,

I note that you are 83 this year and turning 84 in September
2007. With the revelation that you (and many other pensionable
ministers above 55 years of age) are "actually (receiving) both
salary and pension at the same time ", what are your feelings about
it? I am sure many Singaporeans are not aware of this fact (that
pensionable ministers are getting both salary and pension), given
that many letter writers to the press give the impression that they
believe the pensions will kick in only after the ministers have
retired. (ST, 4 Apr 2007, "Pay at 2/3 benchmark but remove pension"
attached below).

Let me do a rough calculation/summary for you (if any of my
assumptions is incorrect, please feel free to correct it):
>
1. Given your seniority and experience, I would assume your
Minister Mentor salary is at least $2 million currently. Therefore,
with the proposed salary hike for ministers from $1.2m to $2.2
million (to be announced by PM Lee Hsien Loong on 9 April 2007), I
can safely say your salary will be likewise increased accordingly,
from $2m to say, $3 million (a corresponding $1m increase)?

2. Additionally, you are also pensionable, so at 50% pension
conservatively, you will also get an additional $1.5 million while
still serving as Minister Mentor.

3. Therefore, your total salary (including pension) will
amount to some $4.5 million a year (1 plus 2 above) with the proposed salary increase. Now, I remember that sometime ago, I read in the newspapers that at 80 years old or so, you admitted you were not as "productive" (or something to that effect) as you were at say, 40 years old when you assumed the premiership of Singapore. Thus, your mental and physical capacities at 80 years of age were probably functioning at a fraction of the corresponding capacities at 40 years old, right? Let me put an arbitrary factor of 50% - ie. you were functioning at 50% capacity at 80 years old when compared to when you were 40 years old. (This takes into account that you may also be spending less time at the office instead of the usual 8 to 10 hours of daily work time - didn't you also mention you now start work a bit later than usual because you need that extra beauty sleep?)

So, on a per-capita-productivity basis, at $4.5 million of
pay working only at 50% productivity, you are effectively being paid
some $9 million per annum, pro-rated, right? (Of course, I am not
going to argue with you whether it should be a factor of 50% or 75%
productivity as you may not even feel any diminished capability at
all, but I believe you get the message).

(Note: as you probably are aware, there are many older
Singaporeans (pioneers who built up Singapore together with you,
many of whom were amongst the early batches of national servicemen) now forced to take up cleaner positions at hawker centres and/or HDB estates, at much reduced salaries of even less than $1,000 per month (without pension though). They are paid reduced salaries because with age, they are assumed to be less productive, both physically and mentally, so they should be paid less than say, an able-bodied foreigner half his age, ie.
the older they are, their salaries commensurately less because of
diminished capacities and productivity, even if they put in the
full 8 hours of work daily. But you are the exception, of course -
the older and less productive you become, the more pay you get!)

Well, I am using 50% productivity because of the following
reasons:

If you had had that "fire in the belly" old self as
evidenced in the 60s and 70s, working 14 to 16 hours a day, the following might not have happened with "effecitve mentoring" - which is what you are supposed to do now as Minister Mentor: mentoring the younger ministers -

1. Shin Corp disaster - potentially losing some $4 billion
of taxpayers' money
2. Sand ban by Indonesia - where is the diplomacy?
3. Accusations that S'pore is harbouring Indonesian
fugitives with laundered money? (IPS, 2 Apr 2007, "Shifting Sands to Prod 'Safe Haven' Singapore",
link http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37178 )
4. S'pore's structurally unemployed (failed education and
manpower planning policies)
5. Influx of foreigners over the next 10-15 years to swell
population to 6.5m because citizens are not producing enough (this
of course goes way back to your "Stop At Two" legacy in the 70s).
6. High cost of living and doing business (high property
prices/rentals, etc..)
7. Ministers running out of ideas to grow economy - instead
have to jump on the casino bandwagon, a move you had vehemently objected previously
8. Citizens not having enough to retire on - CPF started off
well with noble intentions but many now do not have sufficient funds
in their accounts with negative equity, miserable returns,
unemployment, etc..
9. National Service (NS) - low morale of servicemen (NSF and
NSmen) as they question the value of citizenship coupled with their
"2-years of full time plus 10-years of reservist obligations"
("opportunity cost") - the often refrain of
"NS for citizens, jobs for foreigners", especially with the
huge influx of foreigners already here and much more expected in the
coming years
10. ... and the list goes on......

So, are you getting more pay with less productivity?
By the way, are you also paid for being Chairman of GIC? (a
purely "commercial" entity like Temasek?)

As an aside, maybe because of this anomaly in Singapore of a
serving minister being paid both a salary and pension at the same
time, many ex-ministers find it more honourable to retire once past
their retirement age (but still living on a generous pension) as they feel with diminshed capacities and productivity, it is not right to be
tapping on the generosity of taxpayers' money since they would not
be able to contribute as much as their concurrent serving salaries
would expect of them. So, for this, my respect to ex-ministers like
Rajaretnam, Goh Keng Swee, Toh Chin Chye, Richard Hu, etc...