But some 300 charity chiefs, following a meeting with top government officials, said the issue of whether to reveal the salaries of their top executives should be left up to individual organisations, according to the Sunday Times.

"We decided that this was something best left to the voluntary welfare organisations to manage because it is both a human resource issue and a communication issue with the donor," the Sunday Times quoted Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan as saying.

The difficulties in recruiting able board members and staff and the desire for less bureaucracy when reporting to government agencies were cited as the main reasons for the decision.

The call for charities to reveal the salaries of their top officials comes after a scandal over the National Kidney Foundation, whose management resigned en masse following a public furore over how donor money was being spent.

The controversy included startling revelations that its chief executive T.T Durai was being paid S$600,000 (US$350,000) a year, as well as given first-class air travel and upkeep for his Mercedes car.

A subsequent community outcry forced the wife of former prime minister Goh Chok Tong to step down as patron of the foundation, while Durai is now the subject of an investigation by financial crime watchdogs.

A separate inquiry into the management and finances of yet another charity, this one looking after blind Singaporeans, was launched earlier this month, but social workers said it was not comparable in scale to the kidney foundation case.

Aside from the salary issue, the charities also agreed during the meeting on the need to improve disclosure and accountability to their donors.

Balakrishnan said the government would look into simplifying the procedures needed for charities to report to the respective agencies by reducing the amount of paperwork needed to do so.


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