Monday, January 19, 2009

More information on ministers' "pay cut"

The previously reported numbers on the 2009 pay cut back in this post here:
  • President: $3.14 million
  • Prime Minister: $3.04 million
  • Ministerial Grade (MR4): $1.57 million
  • Superscale grade (SR9): $353,000
  • Members of Parliament Allowance: $190,000

The newly reported numbers today reported in ST:
  • MR4: $1.54 million
  • SR9: $351,000

Doesn't look like the drop in the economy has put any dent on the maximum amount of salary that they can earn.

However, there is one key point I've read that puzzles me. Mr Teo says that the total annual remuneration for ministers and top civil servants was $1.92 million in 2008. Based on my research done in this post here, that is not possible. The Prime Minister's pay is already $1.4million just for the base. So how could the total be $1.92 million? Even the MR4 grade I will presume will be around $780,000 annually. I'm sure we have more than 1 MR4 grade minister.

The way the article was written in the ST, it would seem that the definition of ministers and top civil servants = MR4 + SR9. However based on my calculation, that is not possible unless there are very very few SR9 and MR4 grade civil servants. So far I've also not found any statistics on the number of ministers we have per grade. So either my definition of "ministers and top civil servants" is wrong, or my definition of "base salary" is wrong.

I mean if they want to reveal the amount spent, they should reveal the total amount, including ministers' allowance, our prime minister, and our president. Why give us half-truth numbers?

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