Who's Calling the Kettle Black?

I was rather amused to see this article on Yahoo! News today:

Civil servant rapped over cooking holiday

SINGAPORE — A senior Singaporean civil servant has been reprimanded for publicising his family’s vacation at a top French cooking school when his country is suffering from a recession, a minister said Monday.

"It struck a discordant note during the current difficult economic circumstances when it is especially important to show solidarity and empathy for Singaporeans who are facing uncertainties and hardship," Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean said in parliament.

The civil servant, Tan Yong Soon, wrote early this month in a local newspaper about his family’s experience learning to cook at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

He said he attended with his wife and son.Tan, permanent secretary at the ministry of environment and water resources, showed "a lack of sensitivity" and poor judgement, the minister said.

The head of the civil service has already spoken to Tan about the matter, the minister added.

"What the civil servant in question, Mr Tan, does during his vacation leave, this is (a) private decision," said Teo, who is also minister in charge of the civil service.

"However, I was disappointed with what he wrote in to The Straits Times."

According to the newspaper, a basic cuisine course at Le Cordon Bleu costs S$15,500. — AFP/vm

Almost 2 years ago, i wrote into the Straits Times Forum about the insensitivity of the government in raising the issue of ministerial pay at a particularly difficult time for many Singaporeans. i was pleasantly surprised when the editor of the Forum gave me a personal call, telling me that he agreed with many of the points raised in my letter. After it was published, it was rather warmly received on a number of online forums :-)

Here's the letter that i wrote in 2007:

March 28, 2007

NZ govt took heed of public views in setting pay

I AM rather disappointed with the Government's insensitivity in raising the issue of ministerial pay at a time when many ordinary Singaporeans are still trying to cope with rising living costs.

In 1994 when the then Prime Minister urged Parliament to approve the formula for setting ministers' pay, he suggested that paying $22 million a year for his team was a small price, compared to the cost of having an incompetent and corrupt government.

However, according to the TI 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index, there are four other countries which are less corrupt than Singapore. New Zealand is placed No. 1 (together with Finland and Iceland) whereas Singapore is ranked No. 5. Does this mean that the salaries of NZ ministers should be many times higher than those of Singapore ministers?

This doesn't seem to be the case. In a 2003 article by the NZ Herald, it was pointed out that even though the Prime Minister had the 'toughest job in the country' and an equivalent private-sector position would command a seven-figure salary, this would not be acceptable to taxpayers. Her increased salary of NZ$305,000 was deemed reasonable as US President George W. Bush earned only about NZ$330,470 a year.

In setting the remuneration packages of its ministers, the New Zealand government was sensitive to the perceptions of the public (whom it described as 'paying customers') and benchmarked figures against those of its Western counterparts.

As Singapore is an Asian country, should we not be benchmarking our figures against our Asian counterparts'? Even if we consider ourselves as a Western country, our ministers are already being paid many times more than President Bush himself.

So far, the impression we have been given is that serving our country is like any other financial transaction or commercial project; money is the primary focus and motivation. There is no altruism or patriotism linked to the discussion.

I hope that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his Government can take a different approach to this issue.

The style of writing here is a little simpler than what i'm used to; furthermore i remember the editor having changed or added 1 or 2 of the sentences in the first few paragraphs. i must also give credit to a blog that i'd read prior to drafting this letter - it was a blog that belonged to a very intelligent 16-year-old i think by the name of Gail-something, she was the one who originally came up with the idea of comparing our ministers with those of less corrupt countries; i then extrapolated on this idea and fleshed it out in the above discourse :-)