Singapore PM to freeze his pay for 5 years, donate pay hikes
Posted: 11 April 2007 1643 hrs

PM Lee to freeze his pay for 5 years, donate pay hikes

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says he will hold his own salary at the present level for five years and will donate any increases in his salary during that period.

He made the announcement in Parliament on Wednesday, as the House continues its debate on salary revisions for government ministers and civil servants.

Mr Lee said making a large adjustment in public sector salaries now is politically a most difficult decision.

But it is something that must be done.

While it is very difficult to get people to understand and emotionally accept it, he said the issue is absolutely critical.

"If we do not tackle it now, the problem will not go away; it will just get worse - we will be in serious trouble," he said.

After discussing it at length in Cabinet, and with Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in particular strongly encouraging him to do it, PM Lee decided to move now because of the overriding importance of keeping public sector salaries competitive.

The Prime Minister said that to make clear why he is doing this, and to give him the moral standing to defend this policy to Singaporeans, he will hold his own salary at its present level for five years.

The Government will pay him his full pay, because that is how the system must work.

But for five years, he will donate the increase in his salary from this and subsequent revisions.

Mr Lee said he does not expect other Ministers to follow.

While it is a Cabinet decision, he told Parliament, he is carrying the ultimate responsibility, not them.

So what the individual Ministers and MPs do is up to them.

Mr Lee said that he knows they already support various worthy causes.

It should not be a public ostentatious display of how generous they are, but a private matter for them to decide at their own discretion, he said. - CNA/ir

hoho. now all will donate their pay…

Credible statement you think?

Skeptics are aplenty by now...thinking of Boomerang Tactics...

Got a similar thread which is opened 1 min early than you.

Originally posted by Darkness_hacker99:

Got a similar thread which is opened 1 min early than you.

Yes, I noticed...

Guess we were both posting at roughly the same time...

If I knew, I wouldn't have posted...

say only..
later donate already still got charity how?

Well, it is a GOOD MOVE if it is true and the money really does go to "selected causes"...

But then, we are all too accustomed to their 'Say-this-but-do-otherwise' tactics...therefore I urge the use of some salt to go with his latest statement.

PM LHL is playing the political game TOTALLY wrong

Think about it, he suggusted to increase his salary, he got his daddy, old guards, MP cheerleaders and 147th media to support him.

After so much hoo-ha fiasco, the govt agreed to increase his pay.

Then he backed out and say he is gonna hold back his salary. Leaving his daddy and supporters hanging high and dry.

Lets put an analogy to it,

Ah-Loong wants to go for holiday, despite his inefficiencies and shortcomings in office, he still insist of going to holiday.

Then he organised a tour group consisting of his friends and Daddy. Despite his colleagues and boss saying NO. He still applied leave for the holiday.

However, when it comes to the day where he has to buy the air tickets, He DID NOT show up. Leaving his Daddy and friends to buy for him.

Then after Daddy and friends buy the tickets liao, he shows up and says he is still taking the holiday, but he chooses to take a boat trip instead of airplane.

Now all his friends and Daddy feels like they kenna "fly aeroplane". His Daddy and friends not happy, his colleagues not happy, everybody not happy.

Please understand the politic game mah...even office politic also cant do well liao still wanna do country politic?

Originally posted by pinkish purple papayas:

PM LHL is playing the political game TOTALLY wrong

Think about it, he suggusted to increase his salary, he got his daddy, old guards, MP cheerleaders and 147th media to support him.

After so much hoo-ha fiasco, the govt agreed to increase his pay.

Then he backed out and say he is gonna hold back his salary. Leaving his daddy and supporters hanging high and dry.

Lets put an analogy to it,

Ah-Loong wants to go for holiday, despite his inefficiencies and shortcomings in office, he still insist of going to holiday.

Then he organised a tour group consisting of his friends and Daddy. Despite his colleagues and boss saying NO. He still applied leave for the holiday.

However, when it comes to the day where he has to buy the air tickets, He DID NOT show up. Leaving his Daddy and friends to buy for him.

Then after Daddy and friends buy the tickets liao, he shows up and says he is still taking the holiday, but he chooses to take a boat trip instead of airplane.

Now all his friends and Daddy feels like they kenna "fly aeroplane". His Daddy and friends not happy, his colleagues not happy, everybody not happy.

Please understand the politic game mah...even office politic also cant do well liao still wanna do country politic?

U think so simple meh. Subordinates have no control over whether a CEO want to take holiday, or how he wants to travel. Sub has to ren qi tun shen.

U know the CEO very kind and generous leh he increase his pay for a good cause not because he greedy for money. He increase his pay to donate to charity leh how many CEO will do that!!!. Though i think the stakeholders not happy sia. They prefer the CEO to donate using company's name. At least like that can run tax.

One play Angel, the other play Devil?

yar donate to NKF!

we all know where the money will go to.

Now all the ministers will slowly take turn donate already. I can see Mr Wee being the first, and Ms Cynthia phua not doing it at all.

Maybe he will donate his salary increment to his wife.

Maybe.

Just maybe.

Hmmmmm.... how 'talented' of him...

Originally posted by pinkish purple papayas:

PM LHL is playing the political game TOTALLY wrong

Think about it, he suggusted to increase his salary, he got his daddy, old guards, MP cheerleaders and 147th media to support him.

After so much hoo-ha fiasco, the govt agreed to increase his pay.

Then he backed out and say he is gonna hold back his salary. Leaving his daddy and supporters hanging high and dry.

Lets put an analogy to it,

Ah-Loong wants to go for holiday, despite his inefficiencies and shortcomings in office, he still insist of going to holiday.

Then he organised a tour group consisting of his friends and Daddy. Despite his colleagues and boss saying NO. He still applied leave for the holiday.

However, when it comes to the day where he has to buy the air tickets, He DID NOT show up. Leaving his Daddy and friends to buy for him.

Then after Daddy and friends buy the tickets liao, he shows up and says he is still taking the holiday, but he chooses to take a boat trip instead of airplane.

Now all his friends and Daddy feels like they kenna "fly aeroplane". His Daddy and friends not happy, his colleagues not happy, everybody not happy.

Please understand the politic game mah...even office politic also cant do well liao still wanna do country politic?

He should simply come clean and admit in the face of all the evidences and arguments put forward by the people and experts that the current benchmarking is selective and skewed only to benefit the ministers.

Such a benchmarking system will only corrupt the ministers more instead of reducing or preventing corruptions.

He should be man enough to give up the extra salaries caused by the wrongful benchmarking instead of justifying it further with a donation of his undeserved pay rise to charity.

The moral of the story is if a leader wants to be sincere he should stop playing hypocrisy in whatever he is doing. For it will be like the shepherd who cries wolves just for pranks, and who will believe him the next time wolves come.

Now after saying in his inauguration speech in 2004 that he will build an inclusive society and no one will be left behind the next moment he is putting up such a proposal to increase his own and his ministers' pays even though the ministers are already paid world's highest salaries for bill collector and policing duties.

What a shame the only reply he and MM Lee could give to query is to say without proof that his ministers are the world's best surpassing Denmark's, Finland's and Switzerland's so who is going to believe in such a benchmarking now?

Now it is only after the entire benchmarking is exposed to be a grand deception without basis and aimed at rewarding his own ministers for political control purpose that he says he will donate his pay rise to charity.

How could he not feel the sense of shame, defeat or pricking of conscience.

Will the people trust him any more when he makes speeches?

The lesson should be learned : If leaders want to lead the people and make them believe in what they are asking or saying to build a competitive and vibrant society they should learn and learn how to win their respect with truths and high standards of speeches and not shenanigans as seen in the selective benchmarking which no one with a bit of common sense could swallow.

Let the ministers' salaries be pre-approved by the electorate based on election manifestos spelling out how much he wants his ministers to be paid and let them be linked to easing of suffering of the 80% of population who are unable to make ends meet due to wrong policies of the past and perpetual rising costs sanctioned by the same government ministers who are now asking for more salaries.

Originally posted by robertteh:

The moral of the story is if a leader wants to be sincere he should stop playing hypocrisy in whatever he is doing. For it will be like the shepherd who cries wolves just for pranks, and who will believe him the next time wolves come.

Now after saying in his inaguration speech in 2004 that he will build an inclusive society and no one will be left behind the next moment he is putting up such a proposal to increase his own and his ministers' pays even though the ministers are already paid world's highest salaries for bill collector and policing duties.

What is sham the only reply he could give is to say without proof that his ministers are the world's best surpassing Denmark's, Finland's and Switzerland's so who is going to believe him.

Moreover the benchmarking is selective and skewed in such a way as to avoid comparing on apple-to-apple basis to benefit himself and his own ministers.

Now it is only after the entire benchmarking is exposed to be a grand deception without basis and aimed at rewarding his own ministers for political control purpose that he says he will donate his pay rise to charity.

How could he not feel the sense of shame, defeat or pricking of conscience.

Will the people trust him any more when he makes speeches?

The lesson should be learned : If leaders want to lead the people and make them believe in what they are asking or saying to build a competitive and vibrant society they should learn and learn how to win their respect with truths and high standards of speeches and not shenanigans as seen in the selective benchmarking which no one with a bit of common sense could swallow.

Let the ministers' salaries be pre-approved by the electorate or at least manifestos and let them be linked to easing of suffering of the 80% of population who are unable to make ends meet due to wrong policies of the past and perpetual rising costs sanctioned by the same government ministers who are now asking for more salaries.

Thank you so much. U saved me a post

why not all the minister "feel" about the increase and decided that it is a mistake and give all up to the coffer or charities so all will benefit

he oredi know that does not affect him, because his salary is more than enough to let him enjoy luxury and comfortable life. Furthermore, he don't have to support his father at all. His father got more money than him. After he died, his fortune also go to him and his family.
he say by not increasing pay, the so called talent will drift away after few years. I think I would rather let them drift away because I do not want to use my hard earned money to feed these bloody mosquito who will suck your blood bit by bit and year by year.

They should take the effort to recruit talented people that truly wanted to serve the country and the people and to improve their life. And not recruit a person just because he is talented, and threaten to leave if their salaries is not rise. this type of greedy person will never satisfied with his salaries, in the end he will ask for billion or zillion. This is not a commercial company. Their salaries are million dollar per year, enough to let them stay in "Gold" ward if they fall sick through rest of their life but average Singaporean can only stay in "c" ward if fall sick.

I hope to remind dear Singaporeans that ur dear PM is holding 2 post, Minister for Finance, remember? Double pay anyone? How convenient for the 148th media to leave that important fact out.

Actually 'freeze' wrong word to describe lah.....

Keep his pay at the same level for 5 years la...

Wah so generous! Dont take pay can survive for 5 years! how can? we must feed our PM too lei.... Joking ar...

I personally applaude his move...

Seeing this, i must quicky register as a charity organization some how hor... got about 0.7mil to give away lei!!! per year somemore!!! for 5 years!!!

i dun for a moment believe all the crab....

it's all orchestrated to position him on the `side' of the ppl....
they(the dynasty and the inner circle) have the whole scene rehearsed to a T. of cos for the LHL idol worshipping politicians, it is a magnaminous move, a self sacrifice beyond belief...blah, blah, blah...

raintree should consider a movie with this type of script. premier it over the fist week of august and i am sure it will move the nations to tears with his `sacrifice'...............................not

At 11.30 pm, tonight, he has basically repeated what Minister Teo Chee Hean has said in parliament- it is necessary to increase the ministers' salaries now because it is good time to do so in order to retain talents. He added that because he has built up a team of ministers and MPs based on benchmarking their salaries to tbe best he has brought in a good team who has taken Singapore higher.

But although he had obliguely touched on the fact that many Singaporeans are still not doing too well in their jobs or business, he could not and did not explain why these people cannot do well.

If what he wanted to show is that he and his new team has been successful then he should be able to explain why majority or 80% of the citizens are still not doing well in their jobs or businesses. He obviously is still using the GDP to push for salary increases knowing full well that what have recovered are not the domestic sector but only some MNCs and GLCs. If this is the case then he could not certainly claim that he or his team of ministers has done a good job and have their pay increased based on the benchmarking to the best or few lucky ones in the private sector.

If he or his team has done well to deserve the million-dollar pay rise after already getting the world's highest bill collector and policing salaries then he should not see so many citizens struggling to make ends meet for which he was forced to introduce the assistance workfare scheme of late.

So tonight he had not really addressed the most perplexing issues - whether his team of ministers has succeeded in improving the jobs and businesses of the lower or middle income earners to this date and whether the benchmarking to the selective few lucky ones in the private sector is the correct thing to do which is only comparing with the lucky few.

On both counts - economic performance and objectivity of his benchmarking of ministers' salaries to the few lucky lottery winners in the private sector he has again failed to convince people or me that he is correct.

Why only now? Why not earlier?

After such high pay hike, I do not foresee any more payrise for 5 years also.
When was the last one huh??

Or, by saying such, does he mean there will be more payrise soon??

One thing I want to add:


By placing importance on high pay, such mentality it will only propagate down the society to think for themselves only.

On the other hand, if they can set example by accepting lower pay,
im sure they can inspire even more people work hard for the country.

Originally posted by necten:

Actually 'freeze' wrong word to describe lah.....

Keep his pay at the same level for 5 years la...

Wah so generous! Dont take pay can survive for 5 years! how can? we must feed our PM too lei.... Joking ar...

I personally applaude his move...

Seeing this, i must quicky register as a charity organization some how hor... got about 0.7mil to give away lei!!! per year somemore!!! for 5 years!!!

i wanna be part of your charity org...