UK Cameron's Cabinet Pay Cut and our highly qualified cheng-hu-lang

One of the first things that the British Prime Minister David Cameron did was to announce a pay cut of 5% for his cabinet. Given that his is a coalition government, he should be highly commended for this feat. As the Chancellor aptly put it, the deficit overshadowed everything on the new government's agenda. On top of the pay cut, the pay for the members of the cabinet is also to freeze for the remainder of the current parliament.

 

This bold move comes after a time when members of parliament had in the past made claims for petty items as well as items that support their lavish lifestyle. Investigations were conducted and remedial action had been taken to prevent such extravagance habits from happening again.

 

Governmental salary has been a very sore point for Singaporeans ever since the ruling party argues that in order to attract high quality candidates to serve the people, we have to pay then as well as the private sector, otherwise the good people will only remain in private practice and not optimised their capability to contribute to the society.

 

After years of delighting themselves to an excessively fat salary, what candidates are we getting from this premium that the people have to pay?

 

We have the cheng-hu people coming out opening to blame their people of complacency when the notorious Mas Selamat escaped from high-security detention in Whitely Road.

 

We have highly qualified people in charge of home security and yet allowed two detainees to escape from the Subordinate Court while in transit to answer charges.

 

Then we even have minister in charge of public housing let the price of HDB flats escalate incessantly to a point our younger generation has had to delay their plans to form a family. Some of them even though married legally are forced under such circumstances to live separately before they can afford a decent customary marriage. The same minister even has the audacity to defend his housing policy despite being shown numbers and facts that these policies need to be reversed and improved upon.

 

What about the minister who promises this; "If you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place where you will have a roof over your head, where you will have food on the table. Even if you can't afford it, we will have meals delivered to you. You will get healthcare.  Do not lose sight of the fundamentals. And I am confident that we have done our duty for the people who need our help." Apparently, this minister has a problem differentiating his lie from his ability.

 

Better still, we have a widely-known 'good-hearted' minister who spoke so passionately for the well being of the people but open up the use of CPF funds to pay for medical treatment in approved hospitals in Malaysia, a place where he hailed from, where he was borned. He made himself very famous after suggesting that Singaporeans should send their aged parents to old folk's home in JB because Singapore is too expensive a place to remain as a senior citizen.

 

Then a minister wanted to take the easy way out, for children from rich families to get into better school because of a lack of mother tongue skill, by wanting to lower the weightage for assessment in PSLE. His plans backfired when sufficient people petitioned against his silly plan and needed the minister-of-all-ministers to conduct a press conference

 

The mother of all ministers is the singing minister. His magical chant of "Upturn the Downturn" at the orchid Country Club golf driving range and his ultimate self-proclaimed axiom of "Cheaper, Better and Faster" were meant to get Singapore out of the effects of the global credit crunch. So well paid was he that he announced with a wry smile that "each time I look at my CPF statement, I feel so rich".

 

So, these are the ministers that we have and mind you, they are the highest paid government ministers in the world....no shit!