logic?
hello...
finally... time to actually switch on my computer and blog... i have been reading the news... lots of news about things happening elsewhere and around us... things that doesn't affect us, things that affect us, things that we wish affected us, and things that we wish happened earlier so it would have affected us...
maybe i should just get straight to the point...
i have been reading about the proposed pay hikes for civil servants, especially "highly paid" ministers and members of parliament who are supposed to serve with very respectable civic minded passion, as if having "passion" fills their stomachs and their wallets and their children's stomachs and wallets magically by dropping from the sky... i mean seriously... civil servants and ministers and members of parliament are humans too and working legally in the public sector entitles them to a paycheck they deserve, as much as the rest of us who cast our envious glances everywhere as if the grass is always greener on the other side...
for those of you who might not be reading the news or haven't been around, much of the debate has been on highly paid ministers and members of parliament getting substantial increases in their pay... people are unhappy that ministers and MPs, who are in the public sector serving the people for a "noble" cause shouldn't pay themselves more than a token amount for their work because they should take pride in being "privileged" enough to serve the good people who voted them into power...
in doing so, the detractors of the pay rise are trying to tell the ministers that they shouldn't get rewarded for their work, regardless of how well they have done in their jobs... if they do well, it is okay because that was what the people voted them for and if not they should be condemned and kicked out by the next election...
i hate to say this and sound like a social studies text book but we have really gone soft and taken the relative well being of our country for granted... seriously, i feel that we should give credit to them where it is due, and make sure we keep our standards and continue to have competent people serving the country... if we continue to tell ministers and MPs that they should not be getting what their counterparts in the private sector are getting, we are letting them that they are inferior to them, and therefore do not deserve the same pay... eventually, talented people who deserve to be serving as ministers and MPs will leave for greener pastures and fatter paychecks... less competent people will replace them and we will end up shortchanging ourselves, just because 4 million of us want to save a few million dollars every year so we could buy more 4D every week...
seriously... having a "heart" for the people and the appeal of getting "fulfillment" from the job can only take one thus far... eventually, the competent ones will start to realise that they are shortchanging themselves and leave, allowing somebody else less competent to take the job... the honest ones will continue to serve... the less honest ones will start looking for "supplements", and this opens a door to corruption and ultimately incompetence... one does not need to look further than our neighbour,the one whose flag bears an uncanny resemblance to ours and thinks that we are eating their land away by importing sand, to find an example... so why should we shortchange ourselves by driving away the current ones, whom i think are pretty competent, simply because the country is doing well, and replace them with people whom we know will not be the best that we are getting for the job? it would be pretty sad for us to allow money to be a limiting factor for competence and good governance, when we know very well that the country is doing well and we can all well afford it...
what disturbs me most is that many of us understand the concept behind paying high wages for quality work... those who watch football will know that if the top teams stop paying those extravagant wages to their top players, they will request for transfers and find employment with other clubs who are willing to pay them the wages that they think they deserve... telling civil servants that they should be working for the joy of the job is like telling those footballers that they should be playing for the love of the game and not for the wages... the top footballers in the s leage in singapore earn up to S$13,000 a month... michael ballack, the most highly paid footballer in the premiership, earns GBP130,000 a week.. which means GBP540,000 a month... that is more than 120 times the pay of a top s league footballer in singapore... one look and you can tell the difference in the standard of football between the two leagues...
well if you've made it this far then thanks for reading... i would really have wanted to discuss a lot more things but its 2am now and sleep beckons... i havent had a decent night of sleep because of work... i know its a little cliched but hope this entry has been constructive to you...
finally... time to actually switch on my computer and blog... i have been reading the news... lots of news about things happening elsewhere and around us... things that doesn't affect us, things that affect us, things that we wish affected us, and things that we wish happened earlier so it would have affected us...
maybe i should just get straight to the point...
i have been reading about the proposed pay hikes for civil servants, especially "highly paid" ministers and members of parliament who are supposed to serve with very respectable civic minded passion, as if having "passion" fills their stomachs and their wallets and their children's stomachs and wallets magically by dropping from the sky... i mean seriously... civil servants and ministers and members of parliament are humans too and working legally in the public sector entitles them to a paycheck they deserve, as much as the rest of us who cast our envious glances everywhere as if the grass is always greener on the other side...
for those of you who might not be reading the news or haven't been around, much of the debate has been on highly paid ministers and members of parliament getting substantial increases in their pay... people are unhappy that ministers and MPs, who are in the public sector serving the people for a "noble" cause shouldn't pay themselves more than a token amount for their work because they should take pride in being "privileged" enough to serve the good people who voted them into power...
in doing so, the detractors of the pay rise are trying to tell the ministers that they shouldn't get rewarded for their work, regardless of how well they have done in their jobs... if they do well, it is okay because that was what the people voted them for and if not they should be condemned and kicked out by the next election...
i hate to say this and sound like a social studies text book but we have really gone soft and taken the relative well being of our country for granted... seriously, i feel that we should give credit to them where it is due, and make sure we keep our standards and continue to have competent people serving the country... if we continue to tell ministers and MPs that they should not be getting what their counterparts in the private sector are getting, we are letting them that they are inferior to them, and therefore do not deserve the same pay... eventually, talented people who deserve to be serving as ministers and MPs will leave for greener pastures and fatter paychecks... less competent people will replace them and we will end up shortchanging ourselves, just because 4 million of us want to save a few million dollars every year so we could buy more 4D every week...
seriously... having a "heart" for the people and the appeal of getting "fulfillment" from the job can only take one thus far... eventually, the competent ones will start to realise that they are shortchanging themselves and leave, allowing somebody else less competent to take the job... the honest ones will continue to serve... the less honest ones will start looking for "supplements", and this opens a door to corruption and ultimately incompetence... one does not need to look further than our neighbour,the one whose flag bears an uncanny resemblance to ours and thinks that we are eating their land away by importing sand, to find an example... so why should we shortchange ourselves by driving away the current ones, whom i think are pretty competent, simply because the country is doing well, and replace them with people whom we know will not be the best that we are getting for the job? it would be pretty sad for us to allow money to be a limiting factor for competence and good governance, when we know very well that the country is doing well and we can all well afford it...
what disturbs me most is that many of us understand the concept behind paying high wages for quality work... those who watch football will know that if the top teams stop paying those extravagant wages to their top players, they will request for transfers and find employment with other clubs who are willing to pay them the wages that they think they deserve... telling civil servants that they should be working for the joy of the job is like telling those footballers that they should be playing for the love of the game and not for the wages... the top footballers in the s leage in singapore earn up to S$13,000 a month... michael ballack, the most highly paid footballer in the premiership, earns GBP130,000 a week.. which means GBP540,000 a month... that is more than 120 times the pay of a top s league footballer in singapore... one look and you can tell the difference in the standard of football between the two leagues...
well if you've made it this far then thanks for reading... i would really have wanted to discuss a lot more things but its 2am now and sleep beckons... i havent had a decent night of sleep because of work... i know its a little cliched but hope this entry has been constructive to you...
posted by tcy at
9:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home