| Yahoo News January 18, 2012 By Jeanette Tan SINGAPORE’S parliament on Wednesday evening passed a motion to approve a set of recommendations made by the ministerial salary review committee. The salary benchmark, formula and its associated bonus systems will be backdated to May 21 last year, the date Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his new cabinet of ministers was sworn in. Concluding a three-day parliamentary debate on the independent panel’s recommendations, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said he was happy that opposition members of parliament (MPs) seem to have taken a more agreeable position on the issue. “For the first time, the Workers’ Party has stated that it accepted benchmarking salaries competitively, similar to the approach taken by the committee, and a fundamental departure from their past proposals,” said Teo in his closing remarks before MPs voted on the recommended salary benchmarks. “The Workers’ Party has clearly made a fundamental change, and taken a new position, which I hope they will hold to in the next GE (general election). I welcome this change. This change has helped this debate to move forward and arrive at areas of convergence,” he added. Expanding on his analysis of alternative wage proposals raised by the Workers’ Party (WP) and the Singapore People’s Party (SPP), the only two parties that have representation in parliament, Teo concluded that the benchmarks proposed were similar to those made by the committee. He noted, in fact, that the proposal made by the SPP results in a monthly pay of $60,000 for entry-level ministers, which is higher than the $55,000 proposed by the committee. The one proposed by WP added up to the same amount as that recommended, although the leading opposition party questioned the quantum for bonuses involved. Teo ended his concluding speech with calls for his fellow MPs to vote in favour of adopting the recommendations proposed by the committee, applauding the change in stance on the WP’s part as a move toward “avoid(ing) politicising political salaries”. “Let us focus on the very many areas of agreement and similarities that we have on this subject, and not take the path of accentuating the differences, or exploiting an emotive issue to the detriment of Singapore,” he said. The three-day debate saw representatives from both sides of the House presenting arguments for and against various aspects of the committee’s proposed revisions of ministerial salaries. WP MP Chen Show Mao, for instance, called for salaries to be benchmarked to MP allowances instead of the top 1000 earners here, emphasising that political service should be “a privilege, not a sacrifice”, while SPP NCMP Lina Chiam on Wednesday called for bonuses paid out to be published in full every year, and for ministerial pay to be driven by portfolio-specific key projection indicators. Even on the People’s Action Party (PAP) front, MP Denise Phua argued that the selection of the median salary of Singapore’s top 1,000 earners “smacks of elitism”, and that the 40 per cent discount is arbitrary and unappreciated. PAP MP Inderjit Singh also said that ministers’ performance targets should be more clearly set out if high salaries are to be paid. |
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