Just as we all thought that the recent debate on the Gerard Ee's proposal for ministerial salary review is all over, recent spate of events turned on the spotlight squarely on the issue once again. The revelations that two senior civil servants, a commissioner of the SCDF Peter Benedict Lim Sin Pang and the Director of CNB Senior Assistant Commissioner Ng Boon Gay had been put on leave and subsequently relieved of their duties pending investigations by the CPIB on allegations relating to "monie and sexual favours". These are senior grade level civil servants probably paid in the range of $300K or above a year.
How is it that despite the very high level of monetary compensation package and the security of a top level senior civil posting, these two men still succumb to the temptation of sex and money when the occasions arises. These are men are not your average Ah Seng earning $2K a month but instead have the typical profile of a PAP minister holder with one holding a Carl-Duisberg Scholarship and the other a first class mathematics degree holder from NUS on a local merit scholarship. How is it that the arguments that we have been bombarded all days by the PAP government that we need to pay top dollars for top talent in order to prevent corruption did not apparently work on these two men the moment they reached the pinnacle of their civil service careers???Have we got the basic wrong? These are perplexing questions indeed and if we are not careful about it, they will rot the core of our very foundation of a supposedly clean and competence government. Or have the rot already started impervious to our knowledge?
We may argue that corruption on matters relating to sex and money can be found everywhere and are especially prevalent in China where most of our current stock of immigrants originate. However, it must be noted that is because senior civil servants in China are lowly paid so the temptations to corrupt are infintely higher. This is however not the case in singapore where senior civil servants are not only highly paid compare to the peers in the private sector but they also have the added benefit of job security which is often lacking in the private sector.
All in all, I think the current thinking on ministerial and senior civil servants pay is flawed based on the following equation:-
HIGH MONETARY COMPENSATION = ZERO OR LOW CORRUPTION
We have to seriously rethink and retool our model before things start to go drastically wrong.
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