TR EMERITUS

New Zealanders have J Ardern, the Queen of political Syn- (prefix: acting or considered together; united) while Singaporeans are blessed with Josephine Teo, our Queen of political spin. With Ardern, her leadership (@ USD$326,000/yr) gave her citizens an early, decisive hard lockdown but rewarded them with the earliest return to normality amidst this COVID-19 pandemic and accolades aplenty worldwide. While with Teo (@ USD$1,000,000/yr salary, it was work-in-regress followed by work-in-progress costing taxpayers not-to-be-disclosed millions if not billions of dollars… and counting. Before we discuss her majesty’s spin, let’s first remind ourselves of her foot-in-mouth utterances. Back in 2014, Teo said, “That’s why our ability to respond when things don’t go as well as we would like them to, has been affected. Sometimes we also scratch our heads and say: ‘Why are people so angry?’” [Straits Times, 11 Jan 2014]… as if our justified anger would hinder this government’s delicate ability to respond to issues. Then she uttered the infamous, “You need a very small space to have sex” in an interview with Straits Times. Three years later, she shared that she should not have said that as it was meant as a private joke. In her BBC appearance, Teo asserted, “There are in Southeast Asia alone about 10 million migrant workers. A fraction of them in Singapore. We’re not perfect but we do what we can,” she said. Sounds very reasonable. But last I checked, there are 622 million people in ASEAN. Singapore has 5.8 million residents. Teo asserted Singapore has only a fraction of the 10 million migrant workers, or 400k. Or 1/25, oh yea, only a fraction. But on a per 1000 basis, we have about 68.7 Foreign Workers per 1000 residents. Compared to less than 15.6 for the rest of ASEAN residents. In other works, Teo could have also said that her government is intoxicated with exploiting cheap foreign labourers to the tune of 4.4 times our neighbours. Her majesty spins a fine yarn of math and statistics. Yet on Monday (4 May) in parliament, she now claims, “Throughout this period, migrant workers were also on our radar,”. Her subtext is, she has foresight and effort to show for. Don’t we all appreciate her hardwork. But, wait a second, didn’t Lawrence Wong pleaded on 9 April, “Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of the benefit of hindsight,”? So, who are we to believe? The Spin Queen? Last I checked, in the private sector, key managers are paid for results, neither for their plans nor their efforts. If she dares to take home her private-sector million-dollar salary, it’s only right to hold her performance by her results or lack thereof. I save the best for last. On 21 April, Teo said at a press conference, “And it is important for us to recognise this (question of FWs’ livelihood and what is necessary to break the transmission) and not frame this really from a cost viewpoint and as a result conclude that we didn’t undertake these measures earlier only because of cost.” Her subtext is, she’s a deep thinker, circumspect and thorough and humane. In any business scenario planning – and in matters of national gravity, it should be no less if not more important – a manager has to come forward with the total projected cost of taking preemptive action versus costs needed to deal with the consequences of inaction or ineffective action. In the case of the COVID-19 situation in migrant workers’ dormitories, that would be the taxpayers money spent to take preemptive action to pay their salaries, waive their levies and be able to re-house  and feed them at the same venues and facilities that would have to be used if and when the infection spread, as is now the case. But the setting up of those venues and facilities would have been done at a measured pace – without the urgency for which contractors would demand and extract  a price premium – at taxpayers’ expense. And apart from the quantifiable monetary costs, imagine the immeasurable value of what the free, glowing international publicity the People’s Action Party (PAP) so craved for will be now. Instead, Singapore is being reported as shamefully exploitative of poor Third World labourers, dropping the ball and bluntly – and rightly – told to “cut back on the back-patting”. Teo can spin however hard and fast she wants but a closer examination of the details shows up her yarn of hollow, self-serving, Party-serving sound bites that come back to bite her, her PAP and, sadly, Singaporean taxpayers pockets. Regrettably, unless Singapore voters vote in more non-PAP MPs into parliament, Teo will simply brush aside ALL calls by Opposition MPs for the comparative full cost details between what is now done to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and acting preemptively to minimise infection amongst the migrant worker community.     Law Kim Hwee a.k.a. 2cents * Mr Law was a former candidate of Singapore People’s Party in the GE2015 and blogs at secondsight.blogspot.com. ** Search for other articles by Mr Law on TR Emeritus.      Read More →

It is in times like these that ministerial pay inevitably comes into play. Singaporeans’ expectations are raised because we have been told that high pay equals top notch talent and performance. (Left to Right) Taiwan President, Tsai Ing-wen, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong When outcomes are disappointing, the instinct (rightly or wrongly) is to seize hold of the salary factor and ask why the world’s highest paid politicians are stuttering to engineer desired results, why they talk about hindsight when they are prized for their foresight. For this pandemic, Singapore was initially lumped together with Hong Kong and Taiwan as countries that were exemplary in the COVID-19 fight. Taiwan has since moved well ahead to be acknowledged as the model to emulate in the COVID-19 fight, with just over 400 cases and 6 deaths. Hong Kong is not far behind, with just over 1,000 cases and 4 deaths. As for Singapore, let’s just say that we are still gasping for breath. Political pay in a time of pandemic So how do the countries’ leaders stack up in terms of salaries? President Tsai Ing-wen earns US$220,000 a year, a whopping 7 times less than Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s base salary of US$1.6 million (about S$2.2 million). PM Lee also earns more than twice that of Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam (US$570,000 a year), who is on paper the world’s second highest paid leader. (This is somewhat misleading because she is still  behind the Singapore ministers). Seen from this perspective, it’s clear which citizens get the best value for money from their leadership. Furthermore, Taiwan has four times the population of Singapore (24 million people) and twice the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In fact, we could also try using GDP (which measures the size of a country’s economy) as a yardstick. The GDP metric Countries with a similar GDP per capita range as Singapore (between US$50,000 and US$80,000) include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Sweden and Germany. The median salary is US$300,000 to US$400,000 a year for their leaders. The Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Australia, for example, are both paid below US$400,000 a year – considerably less than the US$1.6 million of our Prime Minister. Let’s look at it from yet another perspective. The clean governance metric We have been told for a long time that high political salaries in Singapore are critical to ensure clean governance so for this purpose, we turn to the latest corruption perception index by Transparency International. Singapore is ranked joint fourth in the world for least corrupt public sector, with Switzerland and Sweden. The three countries ahead of us are New Zealand, Denmark and Finland. All these countries ranked above Singapore pay their leaders a lot less than ours. New Zealand, ranked at the top, pays Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern below US$300,00 a year, a far cry from the US$$1.6 million of our Prime Minister. PM Arden earns 8 times the average salary of a New Zealander, while PM Lee takes home 40 times the average wage of a Singaporean. Her conscience wouldn’t allow a salary increase Over a year ago, when New Zealand’s independent Remuneration Authority recommended increasing the country’s political salaries by 3%, PM Ardern turned it down because her conscience wouldn’t allow it. Because we, of course, already are on a high income . . . one of the things we’ve been trying to bridge as a government is the fact that we see these increases at the top end of the scale, without the same increase at the end of the scale where most New Zealanders sit. The upshot is that a country like New Zealand has proven that it can ensure clean governance in the public sector without the spectre of astronomical political salaries. Perhaps at the end of the day, we should just take it that since the title of world’s highest paid politicians is a self-conferred title, it’s an albatross they themselves have chosen to wear around their neck.   Augustine Low      Read More →

Except its “core business”, all other aspects of the business is contracted out. So, we have the telcos, hiving out the laying of fibers to a subsidiary company, Netlink Trust, which contracts out the work to main contractors who then sub-contract out to the sub-contractors. The Telcos squeeze the contractors for the best bid, who in turn squeezes the sub-contractors, who in turn squeezes the worker, who is normally a migrant. A disproportionate amount of profit goes to the top but accountability goes to the bottom; any customer complaint and the sub-con and his workers may lose their jobs. The same arrangement is played out again at NEA. The contractors get into hot soup if the plants die or a tree branch falls onto the road. So, he squeezes his foreign workers doubly hard, while NEA sends out inspectors to tell on the contractors. From the construction of HDB flats, condominiums, MRT stations, rail lines, roads, T5, Tuas mega port, to the delivery of services like that offered by the Telcos, NEA, SATS etc, contracting out work is the norm. But, when the foreign worker time-bomb sets off, the top tier of the food-chain sits tight and wash their hands while the contractors face the music. How about the top-tier folks show some accountability since they benefited the most?   Foong Swee Fong  Read More →