Hansard, 1993-12-03

Under the provisions of clause 2(d) of Article 46 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, the following Members have been granted permission to be or to remain absent from sittings of Parliament (or any Committee of Parliament to which they have been appointed) for the periods stated:- BG George Yong-Boon Yeo - from 17th November to 2nd December, from 5th to 11th December and from 15th to 18th December, 1993. Mr S. Chandra Das - from 19th November to 2nd December and from 4th to 15th December, 1993. Dr John Chen Seow Phun - from 21st to 28th November and from 6th to 18th December, 1993. Mr Chua Teck Chew, Robert - from 21st November to 15th December, 1993. Mr Kenneth Chen Koon Lap - from 22nd to 30th November, 1993. Mr Lau Ping Sum - from 23rd November to 1st December, 1993. Encik Mohamad Maidin B P M - from 25th to 30th November, 1993. Dr Tony Tan Keng Yam - from 26th to 29th November, 1993. Mr Tan Soo Khoon - from 26th to 29th November, 1993. Mr Davinder Singh - from 27th to 29th November, 1993. Encik Sidek bin Saniff - from 28th to 30th November and from 13th to 31st December, 1993. Dr Ker Sin Tze - from 28th November to 1st December and from 6th to 16th December, 1993. Mr Lew Syn Pau - from 28th November to 10th December, 1993. Mr Goh Chee Wee - from 29th to 30th November, 1993. Mr Yeo Cheow Tong - from 1st to 3rd December, 1993. Mr Loh Meng See - from 2nd to 4th December, 1993. Mr K. Shanmugam - on 3rd December, 1993. Mr Cheo Chai Chen - on 3rd December, 1993. Mr Zulkifli bin Mohammed - from 5th to 13th December, 1993. Dr Lee Boon Yang - from 6th to 8th December and from 17th to 27th December, 1993. Mr Matthias Yao Chih - from 6th to 16th December, 1993. Mr Leong Horn Kee - from 6th to 30th December, 1993. Encik Ibrahim bin Othman - from 6th to 8th December, 1993. Dr Toh Keng Kiat - from 6th to 16th December, 1993. Mr Koo Tsai Kee - from 8th to 19th December, 1993. Mr S. Dhanabalan - from 10th to 11th December, 1993. Mr Chin Harn Tong - from 11th to 20th December, 1993. Encik Yatiman Yusof - from 13th to 20th December, 1993. Encik Harun bin A. Ghani - from 16th to 29th December, 1993. Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon - from 18th to 25th December, 1993. TAN SOO KHOON Speaker Parliament of Singapore

The following Bills were assented to by the President of the Republic of Singapore on the dates stated: 15th November, 1993 Economic Expansion Incentives (Relief from Income Tax) (Amendment) Bill 1993. 23rd November, 1993 (i) Probation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill 1993; (ii) Immigration (Amendment) Bill 1993; (iii)Fire Safety Bill 1993; (iv) Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill 1993; and (v) Legal Profession (Amendment) Bill 1993. TAN SOO KHOON Speaker Parliament of Singapore

Order. On behalf of hon. Members, I welcome Dr The Honourable Ahmed Fathy Sorour, President of the People's Assembly of the Arab Republic of Egypt and his Delegation, who are present in our gallery. [Applause].

asked the Minister for Trade and Industry (a) what are the probable negative consequences for Singapore if the talks on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade fail to reach a successful conclusion on l5th December l993; and (b) what are the Government's contingency plans.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the Uruguay Round negotiations are not going smoothly. As the deadline of 15th December approaches, there is a special effort underway to resolve the more contentious points. It is therefore likely that the major players will come to some compromise at the last minute. The compromise may result in a smaller package than what is presently being negotiated. A smaller package is better than a complete failure provided that the areas that are excised from the final agreement do not tilt the balance of interests between the developed and developing countries. Sir, it s not possible to predict with certainty the outcome of a failure. Certain dangers are clear. The present GATT regime has been eroded by protective measures taken by countries such as arbitrary Anti-Dumping measures, voluntary export restraints, and other unilateral actions. Failure to conclude the Round is likely to accelerate this trend and protectionist sentiments may become dominant in countries which are having difficulty competing against imports. Protectionist measures taken by one country may lead to counter protectionist measures by others. Free trade would come under strong threat, negating the achievements made by GATT in the past decades. A spiralling series of protectionist moves with consequent reduction in international trade cannot go on forever. At some point, countries will realise, after paying the price, that a multi-lateral trading system with free flow of goods and services is the only option for economic growth. While we await such a change, we must continue to be nimble, adapt to new circumstances, and use our resources to make ourselves more competitive. We must seek new opportunities and niches in a more protectionist regional and international market. To the extent that we can, we should work with countries that have a common interest, to come together and form economic groupings targeted at trade liberalisation. We have started this process within ASEAN under the AFTA Scheme. Economic linkages in groupings like APEC are also growing in significance. We should continue to explore various forms of tie-ups and linkages to expand business opportunities when the time is right. Such groupings cannot replace a global trading system like GATT. But they can give us some respite until we move to an open global free trade system. In essence, we will continue to maintain our free trade policy and encourage our neighbours to do so. We shall continue to introduce policies and invest in those areas that will keep Singapore competitive. We will also join economic groupings that aim at promoting free flow of trade and investment.

Sir, because we are a free port, ie, we practise free trade, is it difficult for us to negotiate bilateral arrangements as we have nothing more to offer when protectionist blocs start coming up?

Sir, even if we have a series of duties, our market is not that significant that we can expect to negotiate substantial benefits for ourselves on a bilateral basis. But I think we must concentrate on working with countries which do realise the advantage of a free global system and try and help them in GATT, or if GATT fails, in other negotiations, to come together to create a more liberal system. Sir, it is a bit too early to talk and elaborate on what will happen if GATT fails because there are fairly good indications that it will succeed. As I said, it might be a smaller package than originally envisaged, but still it is better than a complete failure.

asked the Minister for Defence what is the rationale of requiring national servicemen, whose service was disrupted for further studies, to complete their service in a continuous period lasting no less than six months, where applicable.

Mr Speaker, Sir, disruption for further studies is granted to national servicemen who have 2 1/2 years of full-time liability. Ideally, such servicemen should remain in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) for the whole 2 1/2 years to complete all the required training courses and exercises. However, disruption is allowed to this group after they have served a minimum required period so that they need not start their further studies later than those who have only two years to serve. Disruption is a postponement of full-time training. It is not the end of full-time national service. The balance period should be effectively used to prepare the servicemen for an operational role. As far as possible, he will be deployed to a unit which is undergoing the type of training he has missed during his disruption. All national servicemen must undergo the key phases of full-time training and be operationally ready by the time they finish national service. To achieve this, the period they spend for training after disruption has to be long enough to enable them to complete the phases they have missed. It would be wasteful and counter-productive for the serviceman if he were to return to the SAF for short spells just so that he can complete his 2 1/2 years service without receiving the appropriate training. Furthermore, national servicemen who are disrupted for further studies are likely to hold the rank of officer or junior commander. They must be fully trained to take on leadership roles in their reservist units. Those who miss the prescribed higher level courses before they finish national service will have to be sent for such courses during the remaining period. There will be little or no opportunity for them to take such courses when they have become reservists, as the length of most of the courses at this level is greater than the normal reservist call-up period. To ensure proper deployment and minimum waste of the servicemen's time, the SAF therefore requires that the remaining service be served in one continuous period. Most servicemen have no problems over this requirement. 83% of disrupted servicemen have a balance period of only two months or less, and can complete their service during their first university vacations. The rest, who have longer balance periods, would have missed substantial portions of their training. They should return to follow the full training syllabus appropriate to their ranks and vocation in the same manner as their counterparts who are not disrupted.

Sir, what are the specific reasons for not allowing overseas medical students to do their national service during their vacations, a practice which was formerly permissible?

Sir, students who go for overseas study are disrupted for the full duration of their courses. During their vacations when they come back, which is no more than 2-3 months, they can complete their service during that time. This can be considered. However, their disruption is for the full 3-4 years anyway. It is not the same as the disruption that is applicable to local students.

asked the Minister for Defence whether he will now consider extending national service, in suitable forms, to girls.

Mr Speaker, Sir, in spite of the declining birth rate in the sixties and seventies, the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) has been able to cope with the manpower shortage through measures such as raising the productivity of the SAF, upgrading the management systems, and extensive computerisation of administration and operations. We have increased our effectiveness to make up for the reduction in numbers. Therefore, there is no defence need, for the foreseeable future, for MINDEF to extend national service to girls. Rather than being helpful to MINDEF, such a measure would only place a further strain to our labour shortage and adversely affect our economy. Instead of introducing national service for all females, MINDEF recruits the required number of females to join the SAF voluntarily by offering competitive market rates. There are currently more than 4,000 females working in the SAF. Over the years, the deployment of women in non-combat positions in the SAF has released more men to take on combat postings, thus ensuring that our defence deterrence and operational readiness is not compromised.

Sir, while accepting Mr Matthias Yao's explanation, would it be a matter of fair treatment for both the male and female, as we have a lot of women leaders asking for fair treatment, and I have a daughter who says she does not mind serving national service?

Sir, activating the Enlistment Act to conscript our citizens for military service is a rather serious business and we would not freely use such an instrument to solve our manpower shortage. If any Member's daughter wishes to enlist, there are many positions available to women in the SAF and we pay competitive market rates for such jobs.

The point is equal treatment. As we are talking about equal treatment these days, does he not feel that the treatment is not equal if we differentiate the sexes?

Sir, indeed it is not equal. We demand from our men a period of national service as well as a reservist liability. To call up women to do the same is equal treatment, but perhaps it is not necessary at this time.

Sir, does the Parliamentary Secretary agree that there could never be equal treatment for men and women?

Sir, MINDEF is not in a position to determine whether in this world there is fair or unfair treatment for women and men. In the same way that all refuse truck drivers are men, it does not mean that we must have an equal proportion who are women.

asked the Minister for Home Affairs what is the position of violence against women in Singapore.

Mr Speaker, Sir, crimes of violence against women can be grouped into two categories, namely, sexual offences and other offences. Sexual offences committed are mostly rape and outraging of modesty. For rape, in 1991, there were 74 cases and in 1992 there were 80 cases, the figures for both years were lower than 1990 when there were 111 cases. Therefore, the numbers have come down. In the first 10 months of this year, there were 69 reported cases. Sir, the number of outraging of modesty cases rose from 716 in 1990 to 774 in 1992. However, Police point out that one factor explaining the increased figures is that more women are now prepared to come forward and report such offences due to changes in public attitude towards such crimes and the easy access to Neighbourhood Police Posts. Since the Member has asked specifically about violence, she would be assured to know that only about 20% of these outrage of modesty cases involved violence. Sir, as for non-sexual offences, women were victims in about 15% (seven victims) of the murder cases in the first 10 months of 1993. For offences of voluntarily causing grievous hurt, females constituted 20% of the victims (51 victims) during the same period. Sir, the statistics therefore suggest that the situation of violence against women in Singapore is well under control and has not changed significantly in recent years. The Police will continue to monitor the situation.

asked the Minister for National Development what is the rationale for setting the household income ceiling of $800 for eligibility to apply for Housing and Development Board rental flats; and whether he will consider increasing the ceiling to $1,200.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the Government's aim is to encourage as many Singaporeans as possible to own their flats, so that they can have a stake in the country. Thus, subsidised rental accommodation is limited to those households in the lower income group, with monthly incomes not exceeding $800, who genuinely cannot afford to purchase their own flats. Households with incomes of more than $800 should be able to afford the monthly instalments for a new 4-room `budget' HDB flat in New Towns like Choa Chu Kang, Jurong West and Woodlands. The average prices of the 4-room `budget' flats in these New Towns range from $70,000 to $83,000. At such prices, the corresponding monthly instalments payable range from $255 to $300, and can be serviced entirely from the CPF contributions of households with incomes of as low as $850. Those who find difficulty buying an HDB flat are provided with assistance under HDB's Low Income Incentive Scheme, whereby families with household incomes of $1,000 or less, buying a 4-room Simplified or smaller flat, are given a loan of up to 95% (instead of the usual 80%) of the selling price of the flat, and need only pay a downpayment of 5%. My Ministry therefore does not see the need to revise the $800 income ceiling for rental flats for the time being.

asked the Minister for Health (a) what is the pricing policy of medicines prescribed in all Government and restructured hospitals and outpatient clinics; and (b) whether he will consider introducing controls on the profits allowed on the sale of medicines by doctors, clinics, hospitals and pharmacies.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Government and restructured hospitals and specialist outpatient clinics (SOCs) provide standard and some non-standard drugs. Standard drugs prescribed to Class B2 and C patients are charged at subsidised rates while those for Class A and B1 patients are charged at cost. Over time, we will rationalise these rates to match the subsidy targets for the different class wards. For non-standard drugs, the policy is to recover the cost from all classes of patients. However, Class B2 and C patients who are prescribed non-standard drugs and have difficulty paying may apply for remission of these charges, as at present. On average, the cost of drugs constitutes less than 10% of a hospital bill. The Ministry has no plan to introduce controls on the pricing of medicine in clinics, hospitals and pharmacies in the private sector. Presently, patients in the private sector have a choice of getting the medicines from the doctors' clinics or to request for a prescription to buy the drugs from private pharmacies.

Sir, from the Minister of State's answer, I do not feel that you are pricing the medicine according to cost. Dr Moses Yu called me and said they actually price according to cost, a multiple of a few times. His answer was that cheap medicine, ie, medicines costing by the cents, you multiply it, and it could be a five to seven times profit. But there are certain medicines that they price below cost. So it could be an averaging that you are doing. I do not know.

What is your question?

Sir, the question is that the answer I got from the doctor to the question which I asked the last time, and the Minister of State's answer do not seem to tally. I put in the question because I thought that it has a policy in pricing and that the cheaper drugs are priced at a higher profit, and the expensive drugs are priced at a subsidy. Is that the way you price it? I do not know.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Mr Chia's question is on the general pricing policy. It is not about specific ways in which drugs are priced. I do remember that the last time he spoke on the White Paper, he raised this question about some drugs being more expensive. But I wish he had also checked his facts. Dr Moses Yu also informed me that for all the expensive drugs - and I have checked the prices - the charges at Government and restructured hospitals and SOCs are cheaper than private pharmacies. If you are referring to certain drugs which constitute a very small proportion of our Standard Drugs List which are priced slightly higher than the cost - our practice is to charge $1 per item per week, up to a maximum of $4 per week - out of the nearly 500 items of standard drugs, less than 10% cost less. But you have to add the administrative cost for dispensing and procuring the drugs. So for administrative convenience, less than 10% of the standard drugs dispensed at outpatient clinics can be slightly higher than the cost. But these average out with those drugs charged below cost.

asked the Minister for Communications whether he intends to take any action in regard to the unabated increase in the tender prices of Certificates of Entitlement.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the prices of Certificates of Entitlement (COEs) are determined by market forces of supply and demand. As the supply of COEs is fixed, the increase in COE prices simply reflects the higher demand for vehicles in the market. The strong demand for vehicles, and hence COEs, is a reflection of public confidence in the economy. So long as our economy continues to do well, we can expect demand for cars, trucks and buses to remain high. This means that COE prices will continue to face upward pressure from high market demand. The only way to moderate COE prices is to increase the supply of COEs. To do so, we must be able to allow higher vehicle growth without leading to widespread road congestion. The Ministry of Communications is therefore looking into various road-pricing measures, such as the whole-day ALS and Electronic Road Pricing, which will control congestion better to allow a higher level of vehicle ownership, and hence, more COEs to be released.

Sir, one of the reasons for the increase in the car population is the availability of cheap finance. Will the Minister consider curbing cheap and liberal finance which finance companies are offering to motorcar purchasers? I have a related question to that. Will the Government also consider cutting down the practice of offering generous car loans to its officers?

Mr Speaker, Sir, I am not sure what the Member is suggesting. But if he is suggesting that we increase the price of loan artificially, then I think that may impact unnecessarily on people who want to buy cars. We should let the market set the price for loans. With regard to his second question on whether or not the Government provides generous loans, I do not think the loan conditions of the Government for cars are generous. I think they are adequate.

Obviously, the Minister has not understood my question. The purpose of COE, as stated by the Government, is to curb or reduce congestion on our roads; in other words, to bring down the car population. Does he not agree with me that one of the reasons why there are so many people buying cars is the easy availability of cheap car loans? If the Government has a policy on car loans by the finance companies that you must provide upfront 70% or 80% cash to buy a car, I am sure the number of car purchasers will be very much less than today.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the purpose of the COE system and the Vehicle Quota System is to limit the growth in the vehicle population to a manageable level. Whether or not the financing aspect for COE ought to be manipulated in a way which makes the financing cost different from what the market sets is a separate issue from whether or not the car population can be controlled. I think the car population is being controlled satisfactorily by the system and there is no necessity to interfere with the financial market in order to cater to this particular requirement.

Can I say that if you do not control the financing aspect and more people are buying cars, the Government will get more revenue by issuing, in fact, more COEs? Am I not right?

Mr Speaker, Sir, the decision on whether or not individuals wish to bid for a COE at the prevailing prices is really up to them, and it is the decision of the individual and the upward pressures being provided by the generally good economic conditions that are much stronger than any of the measures that the Member has suggested.

I would like to ask the Minister of State whether the Government will consider other forms of bidding for COEs since, as we all know now, the COE is very high. Are there other alternatives that we can consider for the bidding of COEs? For example, one method that is often suggested is the pay-as-you-bid system.

Mr Speaker, Sir, this question has been raised a number of times. The pay-as-you-bid system is in no way superior to the current system, which is the single strike price system. There is a good body of knowledge on this subject which has been developed by economists and the theory shows that the present bidding system is a fair system, and the price should not be affected, whether or not you use this bidding system or a pay-as-you-bid system. But we would be willing to accept any reasonable suggestion which Members may have to improve the system.

Mr Speaker, Sir, whether the pay-as-you-bid system will be higher or lower compared to the present Dutch system has not been tested as yet. But could the Government consider putting it on trial for a few months just to see how it will work out? Because in the pay-as-you-bid system, those who can afford will actually pay a bit more, but those who cannot afford will pay a bit less. So for those who can less afford the COEs, they may end up paying a bit less. But you may actually have an average that is similar to the present system.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the present bidding system is a fair one because everyone who bids for a COE in the same category pays the same price for the same Certificate of Entitlement. If you have a system in which you pay as you bid, then there will be, for the same item, for the same Certificate of Entitlement, for the same class of cars, a variety of prices, and I am not entirely sure that that is a fairer system than the one we have.

Sir, I have a supplementary question to ask regarding the use of financing to curb high prices of COEs. Such suggestions are tantamount to credit control allocation by the Government. May I ask the Minister whether, in the past, in Singapore we had any credit allocation scheme of this type to affect other industries such as shipping or property, and whether such credit allocation by Government had been successful in achieving the objectives or not?

Mr Speaker, Sir, I am not quite sure what is the relevance of this particular question. I do not have the information at hand. But, as a matter of principle, it is better not to interfere with the financial market in the way that loans are let out.

Sir, my point is that experience has shown that credit allocation by Government never worked in achieving desired objectives. This is to answer a point by Mr Chiam.

Sir, I shall not attempt to ask a question and answer it at the same time. Can I ask another supplementary question? Does the Minister agree that the COE, instead of dampening demand, is, in fact, increasing it by virtue of the fact that there is a huge residual value in each car?

Mr Speaker, Sir, the price of the COE is linked with the demand for it. And if there is strong demand for COEs, the prices will go up. I think that is a simple balance between supply and demand. The market will find its equilibrium. You can advance many other theories why price goes up and goes down. But it merely reflects the balance of supply and demand at the point in time.

The issue is, in fact, not supply and demand here. In fact, it is in-built in your COE system, because you have now given each car a residual value. It has even been reported that people who buy cars are making money on them. So why do people not go into the market to buy? And as for foreigners or expatriates who bought a Mercedes in 1990 and if they leave Singapore today, they will sell it at a handsome profit. So the demand for cars will be increased because of this.

Mr Chiam, could you ask your question? Are you making a speech?

I am asking the Minister whether or not COE increases demand by virtue of this in-built fact of the residual value.

The prices of COEs have gone up and they have gone down as well. And it depends on a variety of factors. One of the strongest factors is the economic situation as was shown in the recession of 1985 and 1986 as well as some seasonal factors. So the prices go up and go down. While the Member may be advancing a particular theory, I am not sure that it holds a very strong basis for it.

I will leave it at that, but I still have not got my answer. Can I go on with the next question? With the rapid increase in COE prices, would taxi fares have to be increased soon to cover the increase in COE prices?

Mr Chiam, I suggest that you file that as a separate question. Do you have any other questions related to the matter?

That is all.

asked the Minister for Trade and Industry why there was a recall of tenders for the cleaning of Buran Darat, Pulau Renggit and Lazarus Islands; and why the awarded tender sum of the re-tender for Pulau Renggit and Lazarus Islands was higher than the initial tender sum for the three islands.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) is the Government's agent for the management and maintenance of offshore islands. SDC employs term contractors to maintain the hygiene and cleanliness of the islands. SDC called for tenders in February 1992 to clean Buran Darat, Pulau Renggit, and Lazarus Islands. After the close of the tender, SDC decided to delete Buran Darat from the contract in view of reclamation works on the island. Buran Darat had been handed over to the contractor handling the reclamation, and SDC felt that the reclamation contractor should be responsible for the island's maintenance. Since the deletion of Buran Darat from the cleaning contracts resulted in a significant reduction in the scope of work, SDC decided to recall tenders for cleaning and maintaining the other two islands. It was expected that a re-tender would yield a lower tender price as the scope of works was reduced. Contrary to SDC's expectations, the lowest tendered price submitted during the re-tender was much higher than the lowest bid submitted in the first tender for the three islands. As SDC felt that the tender prices received were unreasonably high for just the two islands, it decided to call for a second re-tender. As it turned out, the tender prices received for the second re-tender were even higher than those received in the earlier two tender exercises. SDC then decided that further re-tendering would not necessarily result in lower tender prices, and proceeded to award the tender to the lowest tenderer of the first re-tender because that tender was still valid, and the lowest tenderer was Chua Chin Cheong Contractors at a tender price of $114,660. This tender price is $2,460 more than the lowest tendered price in the original tender for the three islands. Chua Chin Cheong Contractors was also the lowest tenderer of the second re-tender. As you are aware, Government tender procedures are governed by strict rules to ensure that the system is fair and transparent to all. Government does have some flexibility within the procedures to decide to recall a tender if it believes that Government will benefit from its doing so. There were good reasons for calling each of the above re-tenders. It was judged that re-tender would result in lower prices. As it turned out, the officers' assessment was not borne out by the market outcome.

Sir, was there an omission clause in the tender contract itself for the original tender?

I do not know what the Member means by an omission clause. But there are normal rules in tender that if the scope of works is reduced, it could negotiate another price. But normally, the tenderer would demand compensation for a reduction in the scope of works.

Mr Speaker, Sir, my understanding is that, normally, there is an omission clause, which means that the owner can omit whatever work which has been tendered and pay a compensation, say, 5%. And in this particular case, if the tender was awarded to the lowest tenderer in the first tender, it would, I believe, save substantial savings instead of awarding to the lowest tenderer in the second tender. In fact, if there is an omission clause, you could invoke the omission clause for the cleansing work of the third island, which is not required.

Mr Speaker, Sir, with hindsight, of course, we can be very wise. But since one of the three islands was excluded, it was a substantial reduction in the scope of works. The assessment then, which I agreed with, was that if you called for a re-tender, you would get a substantially reduced tender. Whereas, if you were to just adopt the omission method, you would have to negotiate compensation which would result in a tender price which would cover the cost of cleaning the two islands plus compensation for not cleaning the third island. If a re-tender were called and just the two islands were let out for tender, it was expected that the price would be much less. Of course, as I said, with hindsight, perhaps, if they had negotiated on the first tender, they would have got a better price. But at the time that the decision was taken to call for the re-tender, we did not have the benefit of hindsight.

Mr Speaker, Sir, after the second re-tender was called and closed, there was still time for assessment whether to award to the lowest tenderer in the first tender. So why did the officer concerned not make the decision, after the result of the second tender was known, that possibly the Government could benefit by awarding to the lowest tenderer in the first tender?

Mr Speaker, all these questions make a lot of sense when the events are finished, and you look back. But the officer looking at the case at that time had to deal with the facts as they were at that time. Naturally, any officer looking at the tender, ie, the tender price for two islands was higher than for three islands, must have thought that something seriously had gone wrong, either collusion, or some mistake. Therefore, it was decided to have a re-tender. And when the second re-tender was called, the first re-tender was still alive and that is why we went back to award to the lowest tenderer in the first re-tender.

Does the Minister agree that actually it was a wrong decision by the officer concerned, not to award to the lowest tenderer in the first tender?

Mr Speaker, Sir, it is a matter of judgement. The officer made the right judgement because it was quite logical to think that if only two islands were cleaned, the tender must be less. I am sure that if the Member himself were presented with the facts at that time, he would have made the same decision. And if the officer had recommended to me, I would also have decided that re-tender would be right. But looking at it now, after all the events have been completed, of course, one can be very wise.

asked the Minister for Information and the Arts, in view of the fact that the Singapore Arts Centre is only due for completion in 1999, whether there are any interim plans to upgrade the facilities of Kallang Theatre and Victoria Theatre.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the National Arts Council has an on-going plan for the maintenance and upgrading of Victoria Theatre and Kallang Theatre. In July and August this year, the sound and lighting facilities at Victoria Theatre were upgraded at a cost of $840,000. The Arts Council has further plans to renovate and upgrade the main bar, reception room, dressing rooms and the interior furnishings of the theatre foyer in the next cyclical maintenance exercise for Victoria Theatre in fiscal year 1995. A major retrofit will be carried out after the opening of the Singapore Arts Centre in 1999, when we can afford to have Victoria Theatre closed for a longer period. We will take the opportunity to improve the theatre's acoustics, stage flooring, orchestra pit, lighting system, seating arrangement, and air-conditioning. Kallang Theatre was closed for five months in 1992 for cyclical maintenance and upgrading costing $3 million. This included a major upgrading of the toilets, recarpeting the auditorium, rewiring and repainting. In the next cyclical maintenance exercise for Kallang Theatre in fiscal year 1997, the Arts Council will improve the acoustics, sound and lighting systems, create new dressing rooms, upgrade mechanical and electrical equipment, and carry out roofing works and general improvements to the auditorium.

asked the Minister for National Development whether there are plans to build new Housing and Development Board flats in Telok Blangah Crescent.

Mr Speaker, Sir, there are two vacant sites at Telok Blangah Crescent. HDB is looking into the possibility of building new HDB flats at these vacant sites. Details will be announced in the quarterly balloting system.

asked the Minister for Health, in view of the heavy demand for medical services in Ang Mo Kio Polyclinic, whether his Ministry has any plans to expand the medical services.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Ang Mo Kio Polyclinic currently provides a wide range of services which include outpatient medical treatment, maternal and child health services, health education, laboratory and home nursing services. It has a patient-load of about 1,000 attendances a day, which has remained stable in the past 10 years or so. The staff of 13 doctors and 28 nurses are able to comfortably cope with the patient-load. Apart from the polyclinic, there are about 60 GP clinics in Ang Mo Kio. Primary health care is well provided for in the area. In addition, a Senior Citizens' Health Care Centre has opened in August this year in Ang Mo Kio Community Hospital which is only 1 1/2 kilometres away from the polyclinic. Therefore, there is no need to further expand the Government's provision of medical services in Ang Mo Kio.

Sir, what is the range of waiting time in Ang Mo Kio Polyclinic?

The waiting time in Ang Mo Kio Polyclinic is just about the national average. The national average from the time of getting registered to seeing a doctor, that is, consultation, is about half an hour. This is the median, and Ang Mo Kio is just about the same.

What is the range?

I am sorry I do not have the figure for the range. But it depends on the peak hour. I think everybody would observe that, during the peak hours, there is a much heavier patient-load and therefore a longer waiting time. So this median is the average. We have tried to improve the waiting time by giving appointments, especially to chronic cases, so that they can come back during the off-peak hours.

asked the Minister for Education how many children of school-going age did not attend school from 1990 to 1993.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the numbers of children who reached school-going age in 1990 to 1993 but did not register to attend any school in Singapore are as follows: Year of attending Number of children who Primary One classes did not attend Singapore school 1990 80 1991 243 1992 366 1993 347 These figures include children who are living with their parents overseas. These parents could be working overseas or they might have emigrated but not changed their citizenship status yet.

Could the Minister elaborate, of these numbers, how many are actually students whose parents have emigrated or living overseas, or students whose parents are still residing in Singapore but fail to send their children to school?

Mr Speaker, Sir, we do not know the actual breakdown of this number. I suspect that most of these children are living overseas with their parents. Either the parents are working overseas or they have migrated. We do not have the actual figures, but I suspect that the number of parents who have omitted to register their children in school is extremely small.

Sir, it is no good for the Minister to say that he suspects. Will the Ministry concerned implement a system whereby there is a way to track parents who are residing in Singapore but fail to send their children to school?

Mr Speaker, Sir, my Ministry can look into this suggestion.

Sir, apart from the children following their parents overseas, what are the other reasons for these children not going to school? What plans does the Ministry have to encourage parents to send their children to school?

Sir, as I have said, I think most of these children are actually overseas. We do not know for sure, because we have no tracking system. But we will study whether there is some way that we can try and find out who these parents are from the records of births and deaths and from records of children who have registered in our schools. This will require some study. Under our situation where most parents know the value of education, I think there is probably only a handful of children who have not registered in schools for reasons other than being overseas.

Sir, in view of the fact that some children do not register for school and in view of the Prime Minister's concern about the drop-outs from school, would the Minister reconsider his decision not to have compulsory education?

Mr Speaker, Sir, the answer is still no, because our situation is under control although the press has highlighted a few cases of children who have missed out on schooling. If voluntary welfare organisations know about these cases, they should refer them to my Ministry and we will do our best to facilitate their entry into school. But we should not treat this as if it is a rampant situation. There could only be a handful of cases. My Ministry will study further this number and see whether it is big. The key point is that you can compel a child to be in school but you cannot make him learn. Although many countries have compulsory education, in practice, they are not able to implement it and the drop-out rate is extremely high, for example, in developed countries.

Sir, Singapore, being a small country with birth certificates, the enforcement should be much easier than in bigger countries. Would the Minister consider that enforcement is not going to be a problem?

Sir, on the contrary, you may know where a person lives, but if a child runs away to some shopping centre, for example, you need to have a whole army of officers to track down such truants, as was the case in the UK. Fair enough, you know where these people are living, but do you really need to go and chase after them? I think it is better for us to counsel the parents, counsel the children, help them with their studies and make them stay in school.

Sir, the Next Lap stated that every Singaporean should have at least 10 years of education. Now there is this question of a number of children dropping out from school and children who have failed to go to school. How does the Government, given the situation, propose to achieve the objective of the Next Lap?

Sir, I think we all share the same concern that we should educate our children to the maximum and make sure that most of our children go through 10 years of schooling. That is the purpose of our improved education system. For example, under the revision that we have implemented, from next year onwards, most of the primary school children will go on to secondary school. So there should be very few primary school drop-outs. The key point is the method. How do we do it? Do we do it by persuasion? Do we do it by counselling, by making sure that children learn in school? Or do we do it by force of law? We can have a law against littering, but people are still littering. We can have a law against illegal parking, but people are still parking illegally. What is the method that we want?

Sir, I am a bit surprised at the answer given by the Minister in not wanting to implement compulsory education. He says that we can make a child attend school but we cannot make him learn. If that is the case, the Minister is not doing anything about this huge number of drop-outs. Some hon. Members: No!

Yes. I hear that there are 500,000-600,000 of these drop-outs in our labour force.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Mr Chiam should check his figures before he makes a sweeping statement like that. The number of the lowly educated in our workforce is high because of the aged workers. Many of the older workers did not have the chance to go through 10 years of schooling. That is why, in proportion, it is quite a big number. But the number of drop-outs every year from school in our system is actually very small. And we are doing our best according to the methods that we think will work, which are counselling, improving the teaching methods, remedial lessons, working with the clan organisations, and so on. So it is not true that we are not doing anything.

Sir, does the Minister not agree that if there is a problem of drop-outs, then the Ministry should do something more concrete, rather than leaving these drop-outs to clan associations and charitable organisations?

Mr Speaker, Sir, my Ministry is not leaving it to clan organisations, CDAC, and so on. Our schools are the front-line. As soon as they find out that a child has been missing school, they will track down the child, persuade the child, meet the parents, and so on. If the child has problems, maybe financial problems, we refer him to charitable organisations to try to help him out. So we are doing the best we can. But we do not think that we need a law in Singapore because our purpose has been achieved. Many countries have laws for compulsory education but they have not been able to implement it and their drop-out rates are in fact way higher than in Singapore.

1.22 pm

Mr Speaker, Sir, Government will revise salaries of civil servants, judges and ministers with effect from 1st January 1994. In successive revisions, the Government has established the principle that it will pay civil servants and ministers the rate for the job. Two factors make this an urgent imperative. Firstly, while Singaporeans are prepared to serve the Government, they expect to be paid fair wages, commensurate with their responsibilities, as determined by the market. Unless we pay civil servants and ministers market rates, the quality of the Civil Service and the political leadership will deteriorate rapidly. Secondly, the Civil Service has been shifting from pensions to CPF, in line with private sector practice. This makes it easier to hire civil servants, but also makes it easier for them to leave for other jobs. The Government cannot match private sector incomes dollar for dollar. On average Civil Service incomes can be somewhat lower than the private sector, because the Civil Service offers more certain and less volatile careers. However, we cannot allow this margin to grow too wide. Civil Service salaries must keep pace with the private sector, although they will not lead the private sector. The last general salary revision was in 1989. Since then private sector incomes have grown considerably faster than civil service incomes. This revision is to enable the Civil Service to catch up with the private sector, and restore the relativity between the two. Over and above catching up with the private sector, we are further increasing salaries to offset the impact of the revised medical benefits package on serving officers. The additional amount averages 0.5% for Division I and II officers, and 1% for Division III and IV officers and DREs. This is sufficient as PSD estimates that the higher co-payments will amount to only an extra 0.2% of Division I and II salaries, and 0.5% of Division III, Division IV and DRE salaries. This adjustment will ensure that taking the revised salaries in total, serving officers will be better off after 1st January 1994 than before, despite having to make higher co-payments for medical services. The 1989 revision was based on private sector incomes in 1987, because of the lag in gathering income tax data. This revision is based on 1991 data. This two- to three-year lag makes the comparisons conservative. The Civil Service has a wide and complex range of jobs. Thus the salary revision cannot be uniform across the Civil Service. We will make separate and distinct adjustments for each service as determined by appropriate private sector benchmarks. Actual increases will vary considerably across services and even between different grades in the same service. For example, the Executive Service needs a major salary adjustment. It is far out of line with its private sector benchmarks. In addition, it needs to be restructured to keep up with changes in expectations and recruitment. The Clerical Service will also have significant adjustments, particularly for the recruitment grade. Salaries of ministers, judges and senior Administrative Officers are pegged to earnings of top executives in the private sector. These government salaries have increased only by 6.5% since the last salary revision, compared to a 46% increase in private sector salaries over the corresponding period. We therefore need major adjustments to top public sector salaries. Overall Increases Overall, Civil Service salaries will be raised by an average of 7.1%. The average increase for officers in Division I is 7.8%, Div II is 6.3%, Div III is 7.1% and Div IV/DREs is 8.4%. Administrative Service The Administrative Service is one of our key institutions. It comprises the top administrators in the Civil Service. Administrative Officers formulate and implement Government policies under the direction of the political leadership. They play a vital role in running the country and the economy. They must maintain the highest levels of commitment and integrity. In terms of ability, Administrative Officers must be equal to, if not better than, the best private sector executives. The private sector knows the quality of the Administrative Service, and is willing to pay a premium to get promising Administrative Officers to join their firms. Whenever the salary gap with the private sector has widened, the Administrative Service has lost many good officers. These losses are difficult to make up, because the Service cannot easily recruit officers mid-stream from the private sector. Since the 1989 revision, private sector benchmark salaries have outpaced the Administrative Service by between 25% and 50%. Substantial adjustments will therefore be made to Administrative Service salaries. On average Administrative Service salaries will increase by 20%. Can I now ask the Clerk to distribute Annexes (Cols. 1277 - 1282) A, B and C? These give the new basic salary ranges for the Administrative Service. [Copies of Annexes distributed to hon. Members.] Annexes - ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICE, POLITICAL, JUDICIAL AND OTHER STATUTORY APPOINTMENTS (Cols. 1277 - 1282) The new basic salary ranges for the Administrative Service are in Annex A. However, this represents only part of the adjustment. We are also increasing the maximum quantum of the performance bonus. This will strengthen the link between pay and performance. a. Basic salary increase for Superscale C and above will average 15%. The performance bonus will increase the present 0 - 2 months to 0 - 6 months. The total increase will average 34%. b. Other Superscale grades will have a 10% basic salary increase. Their performance bonus will go up from 0 - 2 months to 0 - 4 months, bringing their overall increase to 21%. c. Timescale officers will average 9% basic salary increase. Upper Timescale officers, who previously did not receive performance bonuses, will now receive performance bonuses of 0 - 3 months. The total increase for Timescale officers will average 15%. The adjustments are larger for Superscale officers than for Timescale officers, because Superscale officers do not have annual increments, unlike Timescale officers. In the 4 years since the last salary revision, between 1989 and 1992, the Annual Group Increment for Timescale officers has averaged 3% per year, or 12% in total. Timescale officers have therefore received 12% basic wage increase, while Superscale officers have had basic wages frozen. These adjustments, while substantial, will still not be enough to restore the relativity between Administrative Service and private sector salaries which prevailed after the last salary revision in 1989. For example, immediately after the 1989 revision, the salary of a Superscale C Permanent Secretary ranked behind 360 wage earners in the private sector. Since then, the ranking of Superscale C has fallen to 1,000. This revision will only restore it to 500. The other Designated Services, i.e. the Administrative Service (Foreign Service Branch), Intelligence Service and Police (Senior) have similar salary terms as the Administrative Service. They will receive similar salary adjustments, and the same changes to their performance bonus. Salaries of Political, Judicial and Other Statutory Appointments Government is also adjusting the salaries of political, judicial and other statutory appointments. The need to match salaries with job responsibility and with the going rate in the private sector applies equally to political as to civil service appointments. It is crucial to attract honest, committed and competent men and women to become Ministers, MPs and Judges. The competence and integrity of the whole system of government depends on them. Political and judicial salaries are pegged to Superscale salaries in the Administrative Service. Their revisions will hence be of the same order, i.e. between 20% and 35%. As with the Administrative Service, the revisions will be divided between salary increases and higher performance bonuses. MPs_ allowance will be increased by 13%. The new salaries are shown in Annex B. Judges have hitherto received a fixed bonus of one month in lieu of a performance bonus. After the revision, they will receive a variable performance bonus of between 0 and 6 months, like Ministers and Administrative Officers. The amount of the bonus will be determined by the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice has been consulted and supports this change. In addition, the Government is revising the allowance payable to Legislative Assistants (LAs) and Secretarial Assistants (SAs) to MPs. LAs are presently paid $500 per month, and SAs $250 per month. These will be increased by 10%, to $550 for LAs and $275 for SAs. Professional Services Superscale salaries in the Professional Services will be increased by the same amount as that for the Superscalers in the Administrative Service. Performance bonus rates for superscale officers will go up to 0 - 2 months from the current 0 - 1.5 months. Performance bonuses will also be extended to the Upper Timescale grade, but only for officers at the maximum salary point. The range will be 0 - 1.5 months. This will serve as an incentive for continuing good performance. Finally, the Professional Services will have faster promotions based on the same progression guidelines as for the Administrative Service. The overall total increase for the Professional Services averages 8%. Executive Service The Executive Service suffers from high turnover. Recruits are leaving in alarming numbers: half to two-thirds of each cohort is lost within 3 to 4 years of recruitment. The fundamental reason is that the Service is still structured as a non-graduate Service, even though for over a decade Executive Service recruits have been almost exclusively graduates. Drastic changes are necessary. The present career salary track of the Executive Service is comparable to only the income of the lower quartile of Pass graduates in the private sector. We cannot hope to get the better graduates with such terms. We will therefore raise the career benchmark for the Executive Service to median private sector incomes of Pass graduates, in the first instance. A salary structure nearer the Professional Services salary scales will be adopted. Performance bonus rates will also follow the Professional Services. The apex grade will be raised to Superscale G from the present Upper Timescale. The graduate recruitment grade of the Executive Service will have the largest increase of 20% as it is furthest out of line with the private sector. Pass (Merit) graduates will have a higher starting salary than Pass degree graduates. All graduates will henceforth be recruited into Division I. The overall increase for the Service is 15%. The Departmental Services such as the Labour Service and Welfare Service, which have similar structures and problems, will get similar adjustments. Education Service In the Education Service, Superscale salaries and performance bonuses will have the same revisions as the Professional Services. Overall increase for the Education Service is 7%. New grades will be introduced to give teachers better promotion prospects. Progression guidelines comparable to those in the Professional Services will be worked out for graduates in the Education Service, so that officers with high potential will not be held back. Uniformed Services Salaries for the Uniformed Services will be adjusted using internal relativities as they have no equivalent in the private sector. Relativities between these services and the rest of the Civil Service will be maintained. Uniformed officers will continue to enjoy a premium over their counterparts with similar qualifications in the rest of the Civil Service. The SAF will be making its own adjustments in line with the Civil Service revision. Clerical Service The Clerical Service faces a shrinking pool of "O" and "N" level school leavers. This has driven starting salaries in the private sector up, not only for clerks, but also for salespersons and factory operators. Salary adjustments are thus only interim measures to alleviate the chronic shortage faced by Ministries. Starting salaries are raised about 19% to facilitate recruitment. Overall increase is 8%. A new apex of Senior Clerical Officer (Special Grade) is added to cater to the career development of outstanding Clerical Officers. Division IV and Daily-rated Employees All Civil Service Division IV and DRE salary scales, except those in the Uniformed Services, are covered by Collective Agreements (CAs). Generally, our starting salaries are above the median compared to approximate equivalents in private sector CAs (1991/92). Average salary adjustments for this group will be 5% to 13%. However, the unions have pointed out that their concern is not just with average salaries, but also with the maximum points. PSD has confirmed that Division IV and DRE maximum salaries are below private sector levels by between 20% to 30%. We are therefore adjusting the maximum salary points by 8% to 28%. Limiting Pension Liability In previous salary revisions, increases went into pensionable emoluments. This raised the pension liability of Government proportionately, and resulted in civil servants enjoying less of the benefits of the increase while in service rather than after retirement. Government has decided to make salary increases in this and subsequent revisions non-pensionable. Salary increases will be paid as a Non-Pensionable Component (NPC). This NPC will, however, attract full CPF, even for pensionable officers. Civil servants will therefore not lose out. The public sector unions have expressed to the Government their concern that the new scheme should not disadvantage officers who are nearing retirement age, and had expected to retire with the old medical benefits. This group may not accumulate sufficient extra CPF on the Non-Pensionable Component of their salaries before they retire to cover their expected higher co-payment for medical services after retirement. To address this problem, the Government will pay in-service pensionable officers who retire after 1st January 1994 and receive medical benefits in kind an additional 1% of their salary into their Medisave accounts each month after their retirement, as for officers on the Medisave cum Subsidised Outpatients (MSO) scheme. PSD calculates that this will be sufficient to cover the additional co-payments of most pensioners and their dependants. Officers in the five Designated Services are recruited on pensionable terms, even though all other civil servants are now recruited on full CPF. We do not intend to erode the margin which pensionable officers in these five services enjoy over non-pensionable officers who are earning the same salaries but are on full CPF. We are reviewing the superannuation terms of the Designated Services to bring them up to date and in line with these changes. Statutory Boards This revision does not apply automatically to Statutory Boards. As established in the last revision in 1989, Statutory Board salaries should also be in line with overall market levels. Statutory Board revisions, if any, should be settled in consultation with their controlling Ministries.

Mr Speaker, Sir, since Members have only heard this statement for the first time, and to allow Members time to prepare to debate this subject, I propose that we have a short suspension. When we resume after suspension, I shall move an adjournment of the House to enable Members to debate this Statement.

Order. I suspend the sitting and will take the Chair again at 2.45 pm. Sitting accordingly suspended at 1.43 pm until 2.45 pm. Sitting resumed at 2.45 pm

Sir, I beg to move, That Parliament do now adjourn. Question proposed.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to support the Statement on salary revision. I have actually two points to raise with regard to this salary revision. I support this revision because we must pay well to get the best. That is very simple and very fundamental. However, Singaporeans will look at the salary revision at the top end of the salary scales and wonder at the sums we will be paying our top civil servants and Ministers. It is therefore important that an explanation be given. What are the criteria that are used to arrive at such figures? What benchmark do we use to come to the figure of $38,799 for the top Staff Grade V, and our top Minister's salary of $33,261? I think an explanation is important. We must let Singaporeans know how we arrive at this salary. The second point is that in the private sector, the top Executives are paid equivalent sums or more. In addition, they are given special perks like cars, drivers, expense accounts, club membership, and even share options. Do our top civil servants get similar perks? Some are wondering, because many of our top civil servants are actually sitting as directors in many of our statutory boards. Are they paid - they want to know - on top of this salary? Are they given other special allowances and also shares during flotation, for example, of Singapore Telecom (ST)? These are also perks. Therefore, I think it is important that the Minister should give us an explanation on these two points that I have raised.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the Ministerial Statement. The nation's destiny is in the hands of a handful of selected leaders. Every decision they make affects the well-being of the whole nation, and that is why it has always been the PAP Government's policy to pick the most talented and dedicated persons to hold office. It has proven to be the right decision because Singapore has enjoyed continuous stability and prosperity since we gained independence. But it has always been an uphill battle to induce the selected group of talented people to take up office. The reason is obvious. Not only must the office-holders possess the character and ability of the highest calibre, they must also be dedicated and uphold a high standard of integrity. On top of that, they have to make tremendous personal sacrifice. Unfortunately, the people who possess all these attributes are also relentlessly being sought after by the private sector. And in a buoyant economy like Singapore, the offer from the private sector is much more attractive and lucrative. It is said that a political career is a calling and it has to be so, because it takes a special brand of people who possess this quality to come out to serve the nation. However, the reality is that, when confronted with alternative overwhelming attractive options from the private sector, it is difficult for anyone to ignore them when making a career decision. Let us compare our Ministers' earnings with those in the private sector. Perhaps the nearest comparison can be made by comparing them with top bankers, CEOs, professionals, and top earners in the commercial sector. It is obvious that a great number of these people in this group enjoy a much higher earning than a Minister. If we were to be an investor in a listed company, we would not question the decision of the board of directors to spend more expense to engage a capable CEO to run the organisation, so that the company is well run, to make profit, and to ensure a high return on our investment. In this respect, Ministers and Ministers of State are not unlike chairmen and CEOs of large organisations, except that this organisation is Singapore Incorporated, and that instead of looking after a few shareholders, they are looking after the whole Singapore. Will it then be fair to remunerate our Ministers any less than the CEOs in the private sector? It is important to ensure that Ministers and office-holders are being adequately rewarded. This is one of the ways to ensure that those in office can be completely dedicated and concentrate on the job without being unnecessarily distracted. And it is important to make it less difficult to induce young talent to take up office. As I mentioned earlier, in Singapore the option is so great and abundant for those talented people that it would be very difficult to convince sufficient talented people to take up office and ensure the continuous prosperity and success of Singapore. Our Ministers have a strict standard to adhere to. What they earn is all transparent. And in order for Singapore to be continuously governed well, we should ensure a high standard of integrity and performance of our leaders. We have to be stringent but fair. I do not think anyone should begrudge our Ministers to be paid fairly. This is a small price to pay in return for the tremendous demand we expect of them.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the salary revision package for civil servants, judges and political appointments. Sir, our civil service must constantly monitor salaries which are paid in the private sector and our civil service salaries must keep pace with the private sector salaries and the market rates. This is the only effective way to persuade honest, competent and committed men and women to take up a civil service career as well as to serve in the political leadership. Sir, we have a transparent system. People can judge for themselves and can see for themselves what our Ministers and top political appointees are being paid. I do not think they enjoy any perks. Dr Tan Cheng Bock has asked the question. The Deputy Prime Minister will certainly answer his question. Sir, in some countries, the salaries of Ministers appear to be small, but they enjoy substantial perks. This means that the total compensation package for them is very much more than it appears. We like everything to be transparent and people can examine what our top civil servants and Ministers are being paid. Sir, we must therefore pay good salaries to get more committed and competent people to serve in our political appointments. Even with the proposed revision, they are paid less compared to top executives and professionals in the private sector. They have made an enormous sacrifice and it is only reasonable that we pay them a fair and equitable compensation. Sir, I would also like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the daily-rated employees and those in Division IV, to thank the Government for the adjustments to the maximum salary points of their salary scales. These adjustments are by some 8% to 28%. The public sector union leaders, the DRE leaders, have raised this with the Ministry of Finance, and I am glad that their views are being heard. The majority of the daily-rated employees are on the maximum of their salary scales and will therefore be able to enjoy some benefits arising from these adjustments. Sir, for the Executive Officers, I am happy to note that the Executive Service will be restructured. It will now adopt a salary structure nearer the Professional Services salary scale. All graduates will now be recruited into Division I. I would like to seek a clarification. Will all graduates now in service be also upgraded to Division I? Perhaps the Government can answer this. On the medical benefits scheme, I am glad that the Government has re-examined the impact of the revised medical benefits scheme on civil servants who are on the pension scheme. The payment of an additional 1% of their salary into their Medisave accounts after retirement will help them to meet the co-payment which they now have to bear. Sir, this 1%, however, benefits more those who are healthy and stay healthy. After retirement, the biggest worry of pensioners is falling sick and being hospitalised. They worry that they are likely to fall sick more frequently and that their medical bills are likely to be larger. Sir, many pensionable officers prefer to stay on the existing medical benefits scheme. The public sector union leaders, on behalf of their members, have asked that the civil servants be given this choice. Can they be allowed to opt for the existing medical benefits scheme? I hope that the Government will re-examine this urgently to allow them and pensionable officers this option.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I have a few clarifications to make. The first one is: what is the additional expenditure that the Government will incur as a result of this revision exercise? How would this revision of salary affect the relativity of Government expenditure on manpower? On the performance bonus at Annex C, I would like to know what is the rationale for the new performance bonus to be fixed at four months for the Prime Minister, while the Senior Minister, DPM, Ministers, enjoy a maximum of six months' bonus. What is the rationale for doing that? The next question is: what would be the basis for determining the performance bonus of zero month, one month, or six months? And, lastly, I think the Government should make an international comparison of the salaries of political appointments, particularly of the Prime Minister, the Ministers and the Ministers of State, vis-a-vis other countries, so that Singaporeans will have an idea as to how much our political appointees are being paid.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to speak because the matter under discussion today is very important. It concerns the quality of the people we want in Government. I think that everybody should be quite clear about why these salary revisions are being made, so that no doubts are left in the minds of the public. There are only three points which I want to make with regard to the salary revision. The first point, Sir, is that I have served in the Cabinet for 13 years from 1979 to 1991 when the Prime Minister kindly agreed to my request to step down so that I could return to OCBC and resume my banking career. I have worked with the Ministers closely, daily, for 13 years and I can say, from personal experience, that they are honourable people, and for anybody to question the motivation and intention of the Government in making this salary revision will be, to my mind, quite absurd. Indeed, Sir, I am quite sure that in making the salary revision, the Ministers had in mind not so much the desire to increase their own salaries but the overwhelming need to ensure that the salaries paid in the public sector, to civil servants, to judges, to office-holders, are kept roughly in line with the salaries in the private sector so that the Government can always attract a continuing flow of talent. And attracting new talent is critical if the Government is to remain competent, fresh and active. So paying adequate salaries is just one way of helping the Government in its efforts to ensure that the public sector will not be starved of talent. Of course, we should not use high salaries as a means to attract people to public service, particularly, in the case of political appointments. One needs to have a sense of public duty, a sense of mission if you want to go into politics, whether as a Member of Parliament or as a full-time office-holder. But it helps, Sir, for those who are serving in full-time office that they should be paid adequate salaries so that they can look after their families and they do not have to worry that their families will suffer as a consequence of their going into office. And this will help the Government, as I said, to attract good people to continue to serve in the public sector. The second point, Sir, which I want to make is that we have never shied away from paying our Ministers and other office-holders openly. We have not adopted the practice, which is common in some countries, of making secret payments, or having undisclosed perks in order to compensate our Ministers adequately. This openness is very important because it forms the basis for the honest and corruption-free Government for which Singapore is admired throughout the world, and which forms the basis for our progress and prosperity. We should, therefore, in my view, continue with our present system of regularly revising the salaries of our civil servants and our political office-holders so that our reputation as a country which is free of corruption can be maintained. Finally, Sir, we have to look at the revised salaries announced by the Deputy Prime Minister in perspective. The salaries of the top civil servants, Ministers and the other office-holders are not exorbitant. They are in line, in fact lower than the salaries which are paid to senior executives in the private sector. Indeed, a remisier today in a stock broking firm can, in a good month, earn more than what a Minister can earn in a whole year. And surely, the responsibility of a Minister in the Government, or a top civil servant, is much more than that of a stock broker, or of a senior executive in the private sector. Let us, therefore, not begrudge this salary revision. Let us not be hypocritical about paying our Ministers, our civil servants, our office-holders, adequately and in line with the responsibilities which they carry. This revision in salaries is our investment in the future of Singapore. I support the revision and I hope that all Members will do likewise.

( In Mandarin): Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the Ministerial Statement by the Deputy Prime Minister, BG Lee Hsien Loong. With our economic growth and the improving standard of living of our people, it is only wise and prudent for us to regularly revise the salaries of the civil servants in order to maintain a clean and efficient civil service. I am very glad to hear the Deputy Prime Minister saying that when the Government is looking after the civil servants they have not forgotten the Ministers who have contributed much to Singapore's progress. The talent and the character of our Ministers are well known. They are the top talents in the country but, in terms of salaries, they always lag far behind the CEOs of big corporations. This is a pity. As I said way back in 1989 when we were revising the salaries of the Ministers, we cannot expect horses to run well while feeding them with less hay. We cannot attract good talents to become Ministers and yet refuse to pay them salaries which are comparable to or higher than those of the CEOs in the private sector. I am in the private sector, and I feel that it is very unfair to our Ministers, especially today, when Singapore is doing its best to seek the right people to go into politics. Without a reasonable pay package, it will be very difficult to attract talents into politics, especially in Singapore. There is no reward which is capable of matching the contributions made by the Ministers to the country. If it is necessary to measure them in terms of value, then I can say that they not only live up to the value for money, they have also lived up to the value beyond money by the contributions they make to the country. We all know that in some countries, the Ministers' salaries may be much less than those of our Ministers. But their real income is much much more than those of our Ministers. This is a very unhealthy abnormality and it is not what Singaporeans would want to see happening in Singapore where we have a clean and efficient Government. Today, our Government has provided Singapore and Singaporeans with an "invisible gold credit card". So when Singaporeans travel overseas they enjoy great convenience. Wherever Singaporeans go, whether on travel or on business, they get the respect from people outside Singapore. The people outside regard Singaporeans as a people who are creditable, who are trustworthy, who are honest and they want to do business with us. This is helpful in providing us with the kind of convenience to develop our "second wing". Many CEOs of large companies, because of this "invisible gold credit card" provided by the Government, earn a lot of overseas contracts and make a lot of money for their companies. While Singaporeans are enjoying this "invisible gold credit card", they should not forget the isssuers of such cards, ie, the Ministers. These are the Ministers who have contributed to make this possible. They make contributions to the country so that we are enjoying what we are enjoying today. I hope that we can adjust the salaries of the Ministers regularly and not just once in a long while. I support the statement.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the salary revision announced by the Deputy Prime Minister. In view of the fact that Mr Low Thia Khiang has raised only a number of clarifications, I do not wish to state my reasons as my colleagues have already mentioned in their support of the revision. If I say more, it appears very defensive. So I shall like to make only two suggestions for the Deputy Prime Minister to consider. First, it relates to the salaries of Superscale officers. Since these officers do not have regular or annual adjustments of salaries, I think it is inevitable that the increase once every four or five years seems to be very large. And these will be the two salary scales, that of our office-holders as well as the Superscale officers, which the public will perceive as very extensive salary revisions. But, in fact, if you annualize it, it is not so. This being the case, I see no reason why it must be done in this manner. Is it not possible for the Government to consider changing this system of remuneration or compensation of our senior officers to allow for some sort of annual or regular adjustments of salaries to be in line with, maybe, those on the lower scales? This will make it less contentious and does not make the increase, coming once every four or five years, seems very large. The second point also leads me to make a similar proposal for our office-holders. Our system is very transparent, as has already been made clear by my colleagues. There are no hidden perks in the system. It is straightforward salary. But this being the case, perhaps we should consider establishing some form of a machinery or commission to do reviews of the salaries of our office-holders on a regular basis. Of course, as long as this commission's reports are published, they will be picked up by the media, by the Opposition, or by anyone in Singapore, and I see no reason why we need to come back to Parliament every few years on this matter.

( In Mandarin): Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the statement by the Deputy Prime Minister. First of all, I like to say that I am very happy with the Government's decision to revise the salaries for civil servants and political leaders as announced by the Deputy Prime Minister. This is an overall salary revision. Civil servants from Superscale officers down to Division IV officers will benefit from this revision, particularly for Division IV officers who will get a revision of between 8% and 28%. I think this is very reasonable. However, this salary revision is made in conjunction with a revision in medical benefits. So I would support the call by our union leaders that the Government should allow the pensioners an option to decide whether they want to remain in the existing salary scheme or to accept the new salary scheme. In other words, they should be given a choice to remain in the old scheme or to get into the new scheme. I believe if we give them this option, they should be very happy and be satisfied with it. As for the salary scheme for the quasi-government departments and statutory boards, I think they should have more flexibility in this aspect. Because in these organisations, many of their activities are run along the lines of the private sector. I think they should be given more flexibility, especially in salary structure and the award of bonus to their employees. Another point which I would like to raise is with regard to the salaries of our Ministers. I support the statement by the Deputy Prime Minister. In fact, many people have the misconception that our Singapore Ministers are over-paid. In fact, in Singapore, where we give reward according to merit, many Chief Executive Officers of big companies are drawing salaries of more than $1 million a year. So if we compare our Minister's salary of $20,000-$30,000 a month to this $1 million salary of the CEOs, I think the difference is very obvious. Of course, in other countries, the political leaders' salaries may not be as high as ours, but they enjoy a lot of perks. For example, they are given free housing, servants, cars, drivers, overseas holidays for the whole family and entertainment allowance. From what I know, in one of our neighbouring countries, each Minister is given three servants and his entertainment allowance is more than 10 times the annual salary of our Ministers. Of course, I do not encourage our political leaders to be lavish and waste our people's money. The PAP Government's traditional principle and image of honesty and integrity must be maintained. However, in Singapore, our political leaders have only a salary with no other benefits. For example, they have to pay for their own COEs, CBD, parking and other miscellaneous charges. I think there are some financial pressure on them. Some people have asked me: why is it that our Ministers have to pay for their own COE, CBD and parking charges? One day, a worker was queuing up to buy a CBD area licence for the month and he was very surprised to find that a Minister was also in the queue buying the CBD area licence. He asked me why the Minister is not given free access to CBD. I said it is a right policy. The Minister who introduced it should also abide by the rules. In order to attract more talents into the Civil Service and politics to help in the running of our country, I think we should give them sufficient encouragement and rewards. Because, on the one hand, we want them to maintain the tradition of honesty and integrity. On the other hand, we must also give their families the security of a certain standard of living. I think we should consider giving them better remuneration. Perhaps we should revise the salaries of our civil servants and Ministers more frequently, and not just once in a long while.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I think our Prime Minister and our Ministers must be paid well and, in Singapore, we are doing the right thing in revising their salary scales upwards. But I find it puzzling and a little demeaning that we must talk about how much remisiers and other people in the private sector earn. We must pay our Ministers a very good salary so that they and their families can live well. But the motivation for becoming leaders should be partly altruistic. Furthermore, the respect and recognition given to our leaders far outweigh what our CEOs and our remisiers get in our society. I think there is no need to justify the pay increase for our Ministers with comparison to the private sector. There is no need to be defensive. On another point, Mr Speaker, Sir, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, civil servants expect to be paid fair wages, commensurate with their responsibilities. And as the total pay package includes medical benefits, will he consider giving a higher pay rise to female civil servants to make up for their lower medical benefits? I am sure we also want to stem the possible exodus of female civil servants from the public to the private sector. And if we do not pay equal wages for equal work, which is a principle adopted in the civil service since 1962, then there will be dissatisfaction among the female civil servants and this will lead to lower work morale and possible resignations from the public sector. Furthermore, in Singapore, we are known to mean what we say and therefore I think it is high time the civil service subscribed completely to the principle of equal pay for equal work for both men and women.

Mr Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak on this matter. A friend of mine who is a banker gave me the profile of the people who have been buying bungalows developed by his bank somewhere in Holland Road in Singapore. The bungalows cost $6-$7 million each. The profile of a large number of prospective buyers are men who are less than 40 years of age, who drive Lexuses, who do not require end financing or mortgaging for these bungalows and by profession are either Simex traders or stockbrokers, both of whom have had a bumper harvest this year. Unlike Dr Soin, I am not going to compare our Cabinet Ministers with the stockbrokers and bankers, but surely those who are responsible for creating the economic and political environment for these people to enjoy what they are enjoying and for other Singaporeans to do so, should be adequately compensated for whatever sacrifices they have made to the State and country. I therefore support the proposal for the salary revision. There are a few matters which I would like to raise and these concern the pensioners. When the Finance Minister announced the new health package at our last sitting, several people who are near retirement called me up, especially those who are within a year or two of their retirement. They were upset, disappointed and felt let down, because they felt that after a whole life-time of dedicated service to Singapore, they now have their benefits removed from them. So I am really pleased that the Deputy Prime Minister has announced that this has been addressed and they will get an additional 1% paid into their Medisave accounts. But under the old pension scheme, their spouses and dependants enjoy medical benefits. What I want to know is: will this still apply now? The other matter, of course, is whether they can be given the option to retain their old benefits under the old contractual terms. For some of them, this is relevant as the prospect of a long life may not be there because of existing sickness. The other problem, of course, concerns health care workers which has not been addressed. Some of these people have expressed dismay over the fact that free medical benefits have now been removed from them. Their worries about catching some infectious disease, some of which are still not curable like AIDS, are real. In order to make up for this, may I ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether some form of compensation like hazard money can be paid into their Medisave accounts in addition to the 1%, so that this problem can be addressed?

Mr Speaker, Sir, I join other Members in this House to support the salary revision announced by the Deputy Prime Minister. I would like to suggest to the Deputy Prime Minister that he discloses what the gross salary would be with this new revision.

Mr Speaker, Sir, like others before me, I also support the proposed salary revision. To be competitive with the market and to bring salary levels for civil servants closer to market levels is only right. I do not think anybody would argue with that. However, somehow or rather, the same feeling does not extend to Ministers and office holders. Somehow or rather, the feeling is that for them to get a high salary increment or rather the appropriate salary increment is not appropriate. I suppose it is partly because they are the persons making the decisions and partly because the feeling is that politics is a calling, as one Minister has said earlier, it is like entering a monastery and therefore money and salary are the least important factors of all. Sir, while I agree that money should not be the main factor for political office holders, I would like to say that in this age and day, I doubt very much that there would be any person of a sufficiently high integrity who will be willing to be grossly underpaid as a Minister in any country. Even if such a person exists, I wonder if such a person has the qualities to do the job of managing a modern economy. Sir, the eloquence and ability to attract votes are only the first step in a difficult task towards an effective and efficient government. After the euphoria of an election victory comes the hard work of managing a modern industrial state. In this respect, I think whatever may be levelled at the PAP, nobody can say that the People's Action Party Government has not done a good job of governing Singapore. So for all its worth, may I say that whatever increases in salary to our Ministers, political office holders and civil servants, they deserve every cent of it. Let us not begrudge them their due increases. Let us instead be grateful that they have done a jolly good job and hope that they will continue to do so in the future. Sir, if you look at the increases, although they have been amply explained by the Deputy Prime Minister, they seem to be pretty hefty. But I suppose, like the Deputy Prime Minister has said, it is partly to compensate for the reduction in medical benefits. However, I am not too sure that this new system of increased salaries and lower medical benefits is accepted by all the civil servants. I would like to suggest to the Government to break the proposed increases into two components: one, to meet closer to market levels; and, two, to compensate the reduction in medical benefits. In this way, the Government can offer to all civil servants the option of choosing one or the other: (1) the full increase and reduced medical benefits, or (2) a smaller increase and retaining the existing medical benefits. If the Government is correct in saying that the increases more than compensate the cut-back in medical benefits, then logically the majority will opt for the full increases and reduced medical benefits, thereby achieving the Government's aims. Sir, we must also not forget that whatever the Deputy Prime Minister may say, these increases will also set new benchmarks for salary increases in the private sector. After all, the Government, the public sector, is the largest employer in Singapore and the private sector does look at the trends set by the public sector. However, because the medical benefits in the private sector may be different from that of the public sector, the percentages that have been shown may be too high a benchmark for the private sector. Hence, a breakdown into these two components for every salary level may be appropriate for the reasons I have outlined above. Sir, again, I must add that I support the proposals.

Sir, the Deputy Prime Minister has mentioned that additional salary adjustment to offset the impact of the revised medical benefits package averages 0.5% for Division I and II officers and 1% for Division III and Division IV officers and DREs. He further said that the offset is sufficient as the higher co-payments will amount to only an extra 0.2% of Division I and II salaries and 0.5% of Division III, Division IV and DRE salaries. For those who do not fall sick, the offset is an additional income. But no one will know when he or she will fall sick and they therefore need to have the assurance that they can cope with the co-payment when they do. This is where insurance comes in. For hospitalisation, it is true that with Medisave and MediShield, there should be no problem for them to cope. But public sector employees are also concerned with whether they can cope with outpatient payments. This is especially so for those low income workers who may not have the cash to pay for certain outpatient treatments. There is therefore a need to look into providing insurance or health care plans for outpatient care for civil servants. Government should therefore look into providing the civil servant with an alternative of getting outpatient care. One suggestion is for Government to pay, say, 1% of the salary into his Medisave in lieu of benefits in kind for outpatient care and allow him to purchase an approved health care plan encompassing both outpatient and hospitalisation benefits. The Managed Healthcare System (MHS) plan which NTUC is working on hopes to provide civil servants the cover that they need for both outpatient treatment and hospitalisation. I hope the Minister will look into my suggestion. Sir, I support the salary revision.

Sir, principally, I support this pay increase put up by the Deputy Prime Minister. But I want to ask a few points. The first point is whether we are sending out the wrong message if basic wages go up above productivity. We are asking the work force to negotiate for increments below productivity. So how do we measure productivity in relation to the upper strata workers? In so far as the package is concerned, I share the view raised by Mr Das. This is the basic wage. I suppose there is something like another 30% added to the package here. I may be wrong. But even taking the 30%, for a Superscale C Permanent Secretary earning $12,000 plus a month, if you add 30% times 16, $250,000 is very fair, if you compare to the private sector. Here the worry is, of course, as Mr Heng said earlier, the pressure to look at the total package and for the Government to compare with the private sector. We may scale ourselves out of the world market. A better way in future might be to have a more flexible wage component where bonuses could go up to as high as 12 months, instead of six months, and the basic component may be kept lower, so that in bad years we need not be stuck with high basic wages. I think that is the principle that we are asking the unions to accept. My proposal is actually for the bonus component to go up to as high as 12 months but keep the basic wages lower. I agree with Mr Chng that if we annualize the whole thing, maybe the increment is not that huge. So why do we want to increase salaries only after such a long period of time? But if we have more flexibility on the bonus component, the exercise will be easier, and the public sector need not compete with the private sector. I also agree that the Prime Minister's performance bonus should not be fixed at four months. If the Deputy Prime Minister and all the others get more than four months, I think the Prime Minister deserves more.

Mr Speaker, I declare my interest as an employee of a statutory board who might possibly benefit from the increases. It is always very difficult for a board of directors to set their own pay because people will say that they have their own personal interest involved. So either they will over-pay themselves or they will under-pay themselves. I agree entirely with the Government's philosophy that if you want a good civil service, and Singapore's prosperity depends on an excellent civil service, then you must pay the going rate. To expect people to be altruistic and join the civil service is to be unrealistic. When it comes to Minister's pay, for some reason, people expect more altruism. We have seen in other countries, when Parliament debates Ministers' pay or Parliamentarians' pay, there is an enormous amount of cynicism generated. If you look, for example, the report of recent debates in the UK House of Commons, some newspapers were saying that Parliamentarians were standing up telling each other how good a job they did. This is the problem when a body sets its own pay. For Singaporeans, I think the basic question is: do we think our Ministers are worth it? This is really the basic question. In order for us to make this kind of decision, I think it is necessary that we should have sufficient information. Dr Tan has already asked for the criteria to be made transparent. I think it is also necessary, if it is possible for us, to have the figures. Could we see how the private sector pay has been increasing in the last few years? What was the Ministers' pay in comparison to the private sector pay at the last revision and what is it now before the revision? I think this will help Singaporeans to keep a sense of perspective. For many people, the sums that we are talking about are sums that are beyond their imagination. A person who is a clerk in an office cannot imagine what a person could do with $30,000 a month. And to tell him that this is less than the million dollars that a CEO takes does not mean very much to him. So we have to give the information to people to show them that there are relativities. For the long term, there will always be a certain amount of cynicism. Many people will say, "Look, this is a Government of highly paid people. Therefore, they keep telling everyone else that market forces should drive everything." I think you will find that very common sentiment and no matter how much information you give to people there is always that emotional problem that people have. In the long term, may I suggest that either some fixed formula or some indexing, or some acceptable formula, be developed so that you do not have a real subjective element. Alternatively, why not let the Elected President have a veto over Ministerial and civil service pay? I make this suggestion because the Elected President has a direct mandate from the people now to ensure fiscal prudence in Singapore. It may not be a very big thing, but it may show that the people in charge are not looking after themselves alone. They are willing to subject their pay increases to independent scrutiny. Personally, I think the increases that are suggested for the Ministers and the civil service are reasonable. I think they deserve what they get. But I do not speak for every Singaporean and I think ultimately you have to convince most Singaporeans that the Government that they have is worth what they are being paid.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I would support the salary increases for the civil servants, but for the Ministers' salary increase, I think it is very difficult for a man from the grassroots to straightaway agree with whatever has been argued in the Statement that has been presented. As Members have spoken, we are looking at the other end of the telescope. We are comparing Ministers' pay to the best paid people in Singapore, and even not at the best time, because we know that last year was a bumper year for the stock market and we cannot take the remisier's salary and compare. Anyway, most speakers are referring to what the stockbrokers have been getting. In any event, the main principle of pegging the Ministers' pay to what other CEOs are getting in the market is, of course, one practical way out. But still we have to build a system where there is a sense of mission, a sense of altruism, and a sense of commitment. Ultimately, that will have to be our aim. I would think this is only a temporary measure. I hope it will be a temporary measure. Because in time to come, people who want to serve the nation cannot look to the pay alone. We are serving the people. The man-in-the-street is earning one-thirtieth or perhaps a pittance compared to what the Ministers are getting. As Assoc. Prof. Walter Woon has pointed out, it is difficult for them to comprehend. It is difficult for them to understand. A worker has to work 30 months whereas a Minister only works for one month. An hon. Member: What about a lawyer?

Then the Minister should become a lawyer and not go into politics. We have a transparent system. It is true that it is working well. In 1985, the Senior Minister put it very succinctly: Anyone coming to Singapore would be very impressed. The system works. At least for the last 30 years, Ministers have been doing well in Singapore under the present system. But in the long term, the Government has to account to the people and the only way the Government can account to the people is to have an equally good Opposition. In the long term, the country must make sure that it has a viable and good Opposition. We cannot depend on one party alone. This is my point of view. People may differ with me. They have their right to differ. But I would say that the best way to check the Government is not from within the Government. There must be some institutionalised good Opposition in Singapore. I see nothing in this Statement to provide incentives for the Opposition. I know this is so in England. I am not asking for myself. The Government is talking about pegging a person's worth to the market value. I think if you want to attract good people into the Opposition, there must be a scheme to say that good Opposition Members will be equally remunerated. Otherwise, how can we attract good people towards the Opposition? An hon. Member: You are here!

This present system is not perfect. Look at Teh Cheang Wan. What had happened? Despite his high pay, he was still tempted to be corrupt. So corruption is not necessarily prevented if you just have good pay alone. If there are more scrutiny and more checks, there will be less chance of corruption. Therefore, in this light, I think the Government should look at the long term to make sure that there is good Opposition in Singapore. The other two little points that I would like to make are in regard to two classes of employees, ie, the teachers and the nurses. I notice that the overall increase in the Education Service is only 7%. We know that the Education Service is losing a lot of men teachers. There is a big proportion of teachers who are women. In fact, it is quite lopsided. There have been comments that it will not be good for our children if they are influenced only by one sex. I am not demeaning women. I think there must be a balance. Probably the pay is not lucrative enough that good people are not being attracted to the teaching service. Because of that, a separate industry has developed in Singapore - the private tuition industry. Why is that so? It is probably that the Education Service is not attracting enough good teachers to make sure that they do not need private tuition. But that is not the position at the moment. Perhaps the Minister can look into this in regard to the Education Service. The other group of people who have complained that they are poorly paid for their services rendered to Singapore are the nurses. If I am not mistaken, I think they are in Division IV. I hope the Minister would look into the salary scale for nurses because I know that many are in fact leaving the service and going into the private sector. In fact, they are also seeking jobs abroad which are more lucrative.

Mr Speaker, Sir, under Standing Order No. 42(2), the motion for the adjournment of the House shall lapse at the moment of interruption. As the debate on the salary revision is likely to go beyond the moment of interruption, may I, therefore, seek your consent and the general assent of Members present to move to exempt the motion for adjournment of the House from the provisions of the aforesaid Standing Order.

I give my consent. Does the Minister have the general assent of Members to so move? Hon. Members indicated assent. Resolved, That, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 42(2), the motion for the adjournment shall not lapse at the moment of interruption and that the proceedings on the debate thereunder be exempted from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1. - [Mr Wong Kan Seng].

Sir, while I do not begrudge the salary revision of the civil service, I would really question the emphasis on the increase for Ministers. It would appear that we have now in a way linked the salary increment of the Ministers to that of the CEOs in the private sector. I think it is a very dangerous trend if we harp on this and move along this line, in a sense that we keep on comparing the remuneration of the CEOs with that of the Ministers. As it is now, we have difficulty getting talented men of integrity to become Ministers. What more if you start inducing this sort of idea and philosophy in them? In future, when you get Ministers joining the service, they will be thinking, "Well, I am joining the service because I expect in another four years' time there will be a salary revision, and then it will be brought in line with the private sector." I am not begrudging, and I am not saying that the Ministers should not get the increment. But let us draw a line between the comparison for the private sector and the public sector. One must know for sure that to be in politics, it involves a sense of mission, a sense of sacrifice and a sense of dedication. There are examples around the world that high pay would not necessarily attract talent.

For example?

In the United States, Australia, New Zealand, England. You are not saying that John Major is not a successful politician. Are you saying that? Are you saying that Paul Keating is a lousy Prime Minister? Because in these countries, the Ministers are being paid around S$20,000, and we still find every year, year in and year out, at every election, these dedicated people coming forward, giving up lucrative jobs outside, to stand for election and become Prime Ministers! So, let us not over-emphasise and keep on comparing with CEOs all the time, because, then, you lack a sense of dedication, you lack a sense of mission. Even in Singapore, I have seen some top executives resigning their posts to go into missionary. If we ultimately get a bunch of people who think of nothing but pay which is equivalent to their performance, we are entering a very sorry state of affairs in Singapore. Therefore, as I said earlier, I am not begrudging their increments. But let us not keep on emphasising or comparing with the CEOs, so that we will not lose sight of what politics is all about. And also as a reminder to would-be politicians that when they come in, the question of sacrifice is there, rather than you change your attitude, your philosophy in life to say, "Well, I am coming in because I expect my pay ultimately to be in line with that of the CEO." It takes away the very foundation of going into politics. As I say, look around us. So let us not emphasise this point all the time. Let me emphasise again here. We are not begrudging that the Ministers get this amount of pay. But let us not argue on that reason alone by looking at the CEOs, how much they are getting; we must compare with them, compare with bankers, compare with all these people. No. That should not be done. Similarly, in the civil service, there are people who become teachers. Because of what? Because they love teaching.

No need for increment?

No. They love teaching. Of course, they are getting increments. What I am saying is that people go into teaching because they love teaching. But the point I am making here is: let us not emphasise by comparing with the private sector because the answer is a simple one. If you feel that you are not adequately compensated in the private sector, go into the public sector, or vice-versa. If you think that going into politics is not going to pay well, you are paid less than the people in the private sector, no one is going to stop you. Continue to be bankers, executives, and continue to be CEOs. You do not have to go into politics. It is as simple as that. The logic is there. No one is being forced to go into politics. And you must always remember one thing. The difference between people working in the public sector and the private sector - Ministers and CEOs - is simply this. There is the power, the prestige. There are people who go for power and prestige without the remuneration. There are people who do not want power and prestige, but go for the remuneration. Let us make it clear. It is as simple as that. So let us also not compare with other countries. I have already named a few, like the United States. I have already made it very clear earlier on. Let us not use the reason to say that because CEOs are paid so much, you should pay the Ministers so much. That should not be the case.

How much will you pay?

No. What I am saying is that you do not draw this comparison, because, then, you are slowly inculcating in the future generation of people to say that, "Ah! We can go into politics because, you know, the remuneration will be as good as in the private sector." You lose a sense of mission, you lose a sense of dedication. That is what I am saying.

Mr Speaker, Sir, many points have been raised by many MPs. Let me try and group them together and give them a coherent response, both on the details, also on the facts, the rationale, and the justification for what we are doing. First, the details. Dr Tan Cheng Bock asked what perks civil servants get, so did Encik Othman Haron, in addition to the basic salary. The answer is there are very few perks. You get your basic salary, you get your NWC allowances, same like every other employee. You get bonuses at the end of the year, like other employees. At the top, we have performance bonuses, which we have described. For Superscale D and above, we have a car allowance, which is two months tax-free. It applies to Ministers, some civil servants. And that is all. There are no houses, there are no cars, there are no maids, there are no paid holidays, there are no secret votes. An hon. Member: No timber concessions.

No timber concessions. Civil servants do get appointed to boards of Government-linked companies as directors. And we operate a scheme under the Directorship and Consultancy Appointments Council (DCAC) to channel a small part of the fees from these companies to these civil servants as allowances for the time and effort which they put in serving on the board and acting as Chairmen of these companies. It is administered by the PSD. Chairman, PSC, sits on the Board; PSD adjudicates. There is a formula which is worked out. There is a cap, if I am not mistaken, of about one month's pay (maximum), which can be paid out in terms of allowances to any particular civil servant. It depends what he is doing and how many companies he belongs to, big or small, and so on. It is a token for the effort which they put in. Frankly, I think we are getting cheap labour for the performance of SIA, DBS, or Keppel. We are just getting a civil servant, and saying, "Here, as a hobby, you do this extra duty, and I give you some hongbao, pocket money, at the end." If we wanted similar people from the private sector to take on those responsibilities, I think we would be paying them several times the full wage of the civil servant. Second, upgrading graduates in service who are already in Division II to Division I. We have studied this. There are about seven or eight thousand graduates who are already recruited into Division I. Most of them are teachers. In addition, there are one or two thousand graduates who were originally recruited in Division II, who under the new scheme would be recruited in Division I. These, we will naturally also upgrade and put on Division I. Third, Mr Chng Hee Kok's suggestion to have regular adjustments for Superscale Officers. This is an idea which we will follow up. We have begun to do this in 1993, because in the NWC adjustment we have made two grades - one is for the Timescale Officers who have annual increments, and therefore have a smaller NWC adjustment; another figure is for the Superscale Officers who have no increment, and therefore the NWC adjustment is larger. If we do this systematically, then there will be less need for large and upsetting revisions to Superscale and political salaries every three or four years. Mr Chng Hee Kok has also suggested having a commission to fix the pay of politicians regularly. It is an attractive idea. But I do not know if it is a practical one, because whatever the form, we are the ones who have to decide, who have to take the responsibility, and who have to come to this House and justify it, and you have to decide whether this is reasonable, underpaid, or overpaid. We can have data and commissions, but we cannot avoid the responsibility and making the judgment of what is right and what is sustainable. Dr Kanwaljit Soin asked for higher pay rise for women. I do not think that if we concede this, we will necessarily make her happy. I think her preoccupation is a different one, and that is, medical benefits for women. I could give a full answer, but it will probably distract from the topic under discussion today. The Ministry's view, which is also the Government's view, has been fully explained in several statements and letters. I know that the Member does not accept these explanations, but I think that it is a legitimate difference in view. We have reasons for what we are doing. It is not what she thinks, that we are either saving money or it is for male chauvinism. There are structures in society which you touch only with great caution. We have a family structure and a law in which it is the husband's responsibility, in fact, it is the father's responsibility, to look after the family and children, and it applies even if the father is unmarried to the mother. So the father must look after illegitimate children. And if he does not, we can take him to court and compel him to do so by a court order. So we will look after the women officers. Their children have to be looked after by their father. And if the father does not do his duty, he must be compelled to do so. It is not a question of equal pay, but a question of putting the responsibility where it lies. The alternative for us is to say that fathers do not have this responsibility, and we leave it to the family to decide which one wants to carry the can. I think there are very major implications of that which will, when they have worked out, not at all be to the liking of the people who are pushing for this apparent equality in status. I will just leave it there. I know that the Member would not be satisfied, but we will complete the debate another time. Next, medical benefits. Encik Othman Haron has asked for civil servants to be allowed to stay on the existing scheme. Mrs Yu-Foo has asked for people to be given the right to choose either the existing scheme plus existing pay, or new scheme, new pay. And I think Mr Heng Chiang Meng has asked for the same. We are prepared to do this. It must be all or nothing. This is a package which we have worked out which we think is fair to everybody. We have changed your medical benefits which you are entitled to. We have shifted more of the responsibility on to the employee. And to be quite fair, we have made a salary revision, which I think is on the generous side, which more than offsets this additional expense which you can be expected to bear. We have also made special provision for the people who will retire under the new scheme and will be looking forward to the medical benefits, and who will not be able to benefit a great deal from the non-pensionable component of the payment which we are going to give in-service officers henceforth. I would feel some considerable sympathy for officers who would be retiring on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th January, for example, who just miss out. So for all in-service officers, if they prefer status quo, that means, existing pay, existing benefits, instead of the future arrangement, new pay, revised benefits, we would accept that. We cannot accept a rojak where you take the best from each, new pay minus a little bit, existing benefits all kept. This is a package deal. We have reasons for wanting to move. The pay is something which we have decided on unilaterally to make it overall fair to the civil servants. I think we have done it so that we have covered nearly everybody. There will be a few who will feel that they are better off without this, we will allow them to stay. But other combinations, such as Mr Heng Chiang Meng has asked for, no, you cannot mix and match. That is not possible. The increases are for two reasons. One is to adjust to the market which we were not obliged to do. But we have decided to do now because we would like to make the package a fair one to serving civil servants. If people leave the service, we will have to revise the salaries again and we will come here and argue it again. And I am quite confident Mr Heng will support us on that occasion. Mr Low Thia Khiang has asked how much all this will cost. I should have put it in the statement. It will cost $161 million a year in the first instance. Dr Toh Keng Kiat has asked for health care workers to be given "hazard money". I have not heard of health care workers previously having "hazard money" as part of the package. The statistics show that while there have been incidents where people have caught AIDS from being pricked by needles, or some prevalent form of infection in the hospital which is drug-resistant, in fact, on a statistical basis, health care workers - doctors, nurses, and so on - do not get sick more often than other workers. If you have an obstetrician looking after pregnant women, you are unlikely to get pregnant by contact. So, I think we should take the approach with health care workers as we take with the SAF and the armed services, namely, you are on your own. But if it is a service-related matter, then we will look after you. And it is quite well-defined what a service-related matter is. If you come back five years after retirement and say, "I got AIDS. I think I may have pricked my finger ten years ago." You would have difficulty in convincing a tribunal that that was, indeed, how the matter happened and why, for ten years, you forgot to tell us about it. So, I think that would meet this specific problem. Next, Mr Low Thia Khiang wants us to have an international comparison, how much do other people get paid. Mr Ling How Doong says, "Look at the US. Look at the UK. Do they get paid more or less?" Maybe less, in cash terms. If you are the President of the United States, you have the White House, you have Air Force One, you have Camp David, you have the whole panoply of staff, of perquisites, of the President of the most powerful nation on earth. And when you retire, like Ronald Reagan, you make a promotion visit to Japan, you have a $5 million advance payment for your services. In Britain, cited as an example of charity service, politicians who retire, write books and give lectures. Margaret Thatcher was paid o5 million in advance on her memoirs recently. I am not saying that she does not deserve it. But if you say that the only return you get from being Prime Minister of England is to live in 10, Downing Street, then you have not seen the whole story. And, as Mrs Yu-Foo has pointed out, there are many other perks and perquisites, which are not published and are hidden, when Ministers and Prime Ministers pay themselves piffling and take ceremonial pay cuts to impress the public - houses, cars, and so forth. Do we want to operate like that? We can easily bundle that together and declare nominal incomes, and then we will provide all these on the side. I do not think that would make us better off. I think even the Opposition would agree that it is better to have a transparent system, where you pay for everything, including your COEs, your Area Licence, your car park charge for being a Member of Parliament --- An hon. Member: $20 more this year.

$20 more this year. Then it is for us to give you all these things for free and say, "All right, you are working in public service, noble ideals." There must be noble ideals because otherwise you should not be in this business. But there must also be a fair recognition of what the job is worth and what the person is worth, which I will come back to later. Mr Chandra Das, Mr Walter Woon and several others have asked what the gross amounts will be after the revision because we have given the base pay and there are other components as well which the officers receive. As I mentioned just now, you get a non-pensionable annual allowance (NPAA), you get an annual variable component (AVC), you get the performance bonus (PB), some get car allowances (CA), and we also compute an imputed tax on the car allowance because the car allowance is tax free. So if you add all of that together and divide by 12 to make it comparable with the figures which I am going to show you now, this is what you will get. [Copies of Annexes (Cols. 1283 - 1290) distributed to hon. Members.] The figures are as follows. This is all-in after the revision, annual salary divided by 12, because I have given in Annex III the salaries for architects, doctors, bankers, stockbrokers, and so on, and to make it strictly comparable. Grade F, $14,000. Grade E, $15,000. Grade E1, $16,000. Grade D, $20,000. Grade C, $29,000. Ministers, $64,000. Deputy Prime Minister, $84,000. Prime Minister, $96,000. That is the sum total of it. You can compare with Annex III and you will know where they stand, inclusive of bonus, inclusive of everything. Copies of Annexes - BENCHMARKS, PRE & POST 1994 RANKINGS, AVERAGE 1987 & 1991 MONTHLY INCOME OF THE TOP THREE LOCAL EXECUTIVES IN A SELECTION OF COMPANIES AND PROFESSIONAL FIRMS (Cols. 1283 - 1290) Some Members have said that we should not make these comparisons. It is demeaning. Let me ask, in that case, how do we decide? How much is enough? We have to defend them because this is a political issue. And at every General Election, every by-election, this is a subject which Mr Chiam has made many famous speeches. Mr Ling has made some, and so has Mr Low Thia Khiang. Today, they did not object. I do not believe they will forever hold their peace. There must be a basis to decide what the job is worth. And our basis is: What is the job worth? What is the man worth? How much is it in the private sector, that is what you get, with some discount, in the public sector. It is how we settle Civil Service salaries, it is how we must settle Permanent Secretaries' salaries and, therefore, also Ministerial and the Prime Minister's salaries as well. The tables which I have given you show you the benchmarks which we use for all the different professions. Annex I (Cols. 1283 - 1284) will show you what it is for all the professions. If you are a professional, for example, an accountant, then we will compare you to somebody in the private sector with professional degrees, an honours degree in general disciplines, because that is what you would have been if you had gone into the private sector. Depending on the quality of your performance, if you are a CEP `D', an officer with D potential, meaning you are likely to be able to reach Superscale D by the time you finish your career, we aim to match you to the 90th percentile of the private sector, that means, better than 90% of your cohort. If you are an Upper Timescale officer, that means, you serve but you are not outstanding, then we aim for your salary progression to be about the 50th percentile of the private sector. Similarly, with Executive Service, teachers, clerks, Technical Service, and so on. Annex I - BENCHMARKS (Cols. 1283 - 1284) The only slight exception is the Administrative Officers because they are at the top of the Scheme. They come from a very broad range of backgrounds, not a particular discipline, and their responsibilities are general ones. Therefore, for the Administrative Officers, our comparison is with the top earners of each age group, year by year, as they go along. We are recruiting into the Administrative Service some of the best young men and women every year. There are 50,000 children coming out from schools a year, and out of these 50,000, we recruit about 12. They may not be the single most brilliant persons in that age group, but I think they will be among the top few of that generation. And they will compare themselves, as they go through their career, with how their peers of the same ability are doing in the private sector, not an average person, but somebody who was at school with him whom he knew. I knew him, he was like me in school, what job is he doing now. Therefore, our benchmark aims for the top of each cohort. For those who are likely to go beyond Permanent Secretary, Grade C, our benchmark is that you will be the 10th in your age group. If you are 30 years old, you have not reached the Permanent Secretary's grade yet, but you are on the way, a promising young man in the private sector may be earning more than you, but you should be somewhere around there, no more than 10 people ahead of you. In fact, I believe we should also count lawyers, doctors, engineers and other partners, because that is a viable alternative for these bright and ambitious young people. But as of now, the comparison is with salaried private sector people. If you are expected to rise to Superscale D, which means senior Deputy Secretary, just under Permanent Secretary, already a good officer, then the private sector benchmark is the 100th person. It is not just us making these comparisons. I can tell you that every young officer makes this comparison and he does not need my table to know what his peers are earning. Because they are telling him, "Don't be such a fool, come and join me. Here are the terms." I can also tell you that young people are anxious, eager to get ahead, prepared to work for it and are very sensitive to these differences, which are not just differences in rewards but also differences in their sense of having achieved a certain status in society. So that is what we aim for. How does it work out? Look at Annex II (Cols. 1285 - 1286). Somebody who is on the D track, able to be Superscale D eventually, at the age of 30, he has reached the grade of PAS, Upper Timescale. He ranks 190th in his cohort. He may not be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but you tell me there are 190 people, of that age, abler and making a bigger contribution than him in Singapore? I doubt it. At 35, he has reached Grade F, his ranking will be 155. By the time he reaches 40, promoted to the grade of E1, his ranking is 178. In fact, he has lost ground, promoted but the private sector has moved faster. Age 45, he has reached the pinnacle of his career, Grade D. His ranking is 131. Our target was 100. After the revision, it shows that he will be around 90. You look at the right hand column. Annex II - PRE & POST 1994 RANKINGS (Cols. 1285 - 1286) If he is on the C track, he does a little bit better than the D tracker, but still his ranking is beyond 100. And after the revision, he is around 50. I think we have not gone far enough. Going far enough means revision not just to salary but also revision to the progression rate. Because it is not just how much you are paid but also how quick is your movement each year, promoted from grade to grade and higher responsibility which young people are looking for. We have speeded up civil service progression rate but I think we have not speeded them up enough and we should take some more steps to go further. And PSC will be discussing this with PSD and we will be taking it up. That is along the way. When you reach the top grade as a Permanent Secretary or as a Minister of State or a Minister, your ranking is not just with your age group, but really with everybody in the workforce, regardless of age. Because if you are a Minister, you may be the only one of that age, but you are really competing with other people who may be younger or older than you, but doing the same job, carrying the same responsibility. So you must make the comparison regardless of age in the workforce. What do the figures show? At the bottom of Annex II, Minister of State, Permanent Secretary Grade C, before the revision he ranks 1,096. Ministers, 130, DPM, 59, PM, 38. After the revision, there is an improvement, but actually still not where we stood in 1989. These are comparisons which have to be made. The other comparison you can make is Annex III (Cols. 1287 - 1288), which is what we showed you back in 1989. This is updated, and it shows you what top executives in the private sector are earning, generally, on salaries. Some of them like architects, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers may be partners. These are not individual companies. But for each profession, we took three big firms. In each firm, we took three men - top man, the second man and the third man. We took their salaries, we averaged it for the three firms. So that is what you see in the table. On the right hand column, you see what the top man in that profession is earning. Annex III - AVERAGE 1987 & 1991 MONTHLY INCOME OF THE TOP THREE LOCAL EXECUTIVES IN A SELECTION OF COMPANIES AND PROFESSIONAL FIRMS (Cols. 1287 - 1288) Architects are earning $250,000 a month; doctors, $168,000; bankers, $158,000, and so forth. As I pointed out just now, Ministers at $64,000 rank after local manufacturers, before car distributors. Oil company executives are understated because it so happens that several of the large oil companies had expatriate bosses. But, in fact, when they have Singaporean bosses, the Singaporeans will be paid as much as the expatriates. That is where Ministers stand. The Permanent Secretary, Grade C, does not have to be compared to the top man on this table, because he has just entered the permanent secretary grade. But he is at least comparable to an average second man on this table. If you describe him as a chief operating officer of a big firm, I think that is an under description, because the Permanent Secretary would be looking after a Ministry. He may be looking after a statutory board. He may be responsible for a big company like Singapore Telecom, and any time equal to a second line job, in the middle. He is not even at the bottom of the third. Permanent Secretaries today are second last, before car distributors (number three man). Permanent Secretaries, after revision, will have $29,000 and will move up some. He will rank 8th behind the number two man (oil company executives), and ahead of the car distributors, ahead of the engineers, and the multinational manufacturers. My point is we have to set reasonable benchmarks and we have to aim to hit them and revise them. What is an objective basis for deciding their salaries? It is a certain level compared to the private sector, not the top, neither the bottom, but one which is somewhere in the middle with a certain discount, because this is a public service. It is not as volatile as the private sector. There is a certain amount of public service sacrifice which is expected, and I think fairly so. We hit that point and we maintain that point from year to year. I think we should establish these points clearly and explicitly so that each time we make a salary revision, we can refer back to these benchmarks and know whether we have made progress or not. Mr Ling, Mr Chiam and Dr Soin have said you should not compare with the private sector. But we have to make the comparison. If not with the private sector, with what? Mr Chiam says this looks a lot. He does not begrudge it, but it looks a lot to a man from the grassroots. How much is enough, Mr Chiam? Should it be half? Should it be quarter? Should it be the same as a lawyer's pay which Mr Chiam earns? Or is that already too much? Because that may be 30 times what a worker earns. Has either Mr Chiam or Mr Ling who has made a big issue of this, and said that since they are politicians, this pay is of no consequence and will be given away? I remember on one occasion that point came up before this House when Mr Chiam met Mr Rajaratnam and they had a challenge. Mr Chiam said, "I'll give up my allowance if you give up yours." Mr Rajaratnam said, "I'll give up my pay if you give up yours." There was no answer. So what is fair? What is fair is what sort of job is it, what sort of men do you want. I think that a Permanent Secretary's job is any time higher, more complicated, more responsible, than all but maybe 10-15 CEO jobs in the private sector, at most. If you are running Defence, if you are running Education or Finance, not only millions of dollars but lives and the economy. You make a mistake, the consequences are disastrous. There may not be a financial bottom line which shows whether you have made a bad mistake or not. But we will still pay if you do. The Minister's job is even bigger than that. It is not just running the organisation but also the political responsibilities, justifying, conceiving, explaining, persuading, carrying people along. It is a big job. What sort of men do you want to hold this job? People are paid in Singapore from $500 to $3-$5 million. If you pay $1,000, I am sure there will be people who will queue up to be Ministers. If you pay $10,000, there will also be people who will queue up to be Ministers. Or $100,000. What sort of people do you want? I think you want people near the top. If you are in the legal profession and stagnating around the middle of the profession or the lower middle of the profession, conceivably, if you became a Minister, you would be a totally adequate Minister completely on top with your job and able to carry all that weight of responsibility. There might be some people like that, but I do not know how many. I know that we have searched and we have not found many. I think Mr Chiam has searched and he has found Mr Ling How Doong, Mr Cheo Chai Chen and Dr Chee Soon Juan. So when people say that there will be many people outside - if you do not want to come in, that is fine - there will be many outside who are prepared to do the job for less. That is good. Show me your team. Then Singaporeans will be amazed by the quality of your candidates. It is not possible. It is a real problem. We have to find the right sort of men to hold this job. And the right sort of men will be at the top of their careers. You will be a successful banker. You will be a successful lawyer. You will be a successful executive in an MNC. You may be a successful accountant. And you may still not be a successful Minister. But the chances are better and that is what we are aiming for. It is necessary for us always to preserve a sense of public service, as even Mr Chiam and Mr Ling have pointed out. But you have to be realistic about what is necessary in order to make it possible for people to give public service. If this is unnecessary, then we would be able to see able people coming forward to say, "No, I not only do not want your pay, I will give you all the pay I have." As Mr Ling said, missionaries often do, and run the country as a religious order and a calling, and the country will prosper. I think we can find one or two such people. Can we find 81 to be MPs? I have not seen any in the Opposition who says, "I'll forsake my privileges or rights." So that is a real problem. We pay for what we get, what we want. Whether the incumbents are up to that, that is a separate question which Singaporeans must decide. But that is what we are aiming for. We try to get Ministers who will meet that level. Singaporeans have to judge whether we have been successful. I think the right solution is, if you say that the Minister is not up to it, you change the Minister. I do not think the right solution is to say, "This is a cheap Minister. We will give him half pay." You might apply that on both sides of the floor and where would that leave us? None of the Opposition Members have spoken up vigorously today. Neither Mr Ling nor Mr Chiam nor Mr Low. I hope they remember this silence when next they hold an election rally. [Applause].

Mr Speaker, Sir, the Deputy Prime Minister has not answered my question on the performance bonus which I brought up just now.

Sorry. I should have done this earlier. The Prime Minister and a few of the appointment holders are on a fixed bonus - the President, the Chief Justice, the Speaker, Chairman, PSC, the Auditor-General, and the Attorney-General. The rationale is simple. If the Prime Minister is to be paid a variable bonus, who is to decide how much he deserves? Or the Speaker. It cannot be done. He is the boss. He will decide what other people are worth. He will judge, he will consult a few of his senior colleagues, but finally he takes the responsibility and decides how much each person's contribution is worth. For the Prime Minister himself, a number has to be set. It used to be set at two when the performance bonus range was zero to two. In fact, the Prime Minister never took two. He took less than that. When we revised the scheme to zero to six, the Prime Minister suggested that he would set his bonus at four. It is a fixed point. I think even with that fixed point, if you make a comparison of the Prime Minister's salary with Annex III, you will see that there is a long gap between him and many of the private sector business people.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I have left the Deputy Prime Minister, BG Lee, to carry the burden of explaining the reasons for the salary revision because he has been working on this in the last few months. From the response of the Members of Parliament, I see that there is unanimous support for the revision for civil servants. I believe I am right in my assessment. It is the adjustment for the Ministers that attracts some concern. I want to confine myself therefore to the philosophy behind the salary adjustment for Ministers and other political office-holders. Some of my colleagues are a little squeamish about the political cost of increasing salaries for Ministers. They fear that the Opposition will exploit it and work up voter dissatisfaction against the Government. I do not deny that this salary revision will cost us some votes because the Opposition will play up the politics of envy. And indeed they have, at every election, by mischievously and wrongly comparing how much a Minister earns with what an average worker earns a month. Today, Mr Ling has said that he does not begrudge the pay of the Ministers. Mr Chiam and Mr Low seem to be supportive. Of course, they made some valid points about Ministers coming in to serve not just for money alone. I hope they will remember what they have said today and at future elections do not play up this politics of envy just for the votes. There is some political cost. But I have to weigh this against the greater cost to the country and Singaporeans if we fail to have a Cabinet of integrity and exceptional ability. I have weighed the costs to the PAP, and decided that whatever they are, the larger interests of the nation must prevail. I have faith in the commonsense and judgment of the majority of Singaporeans. So long as we can deliver a better life for them, and clearly explain the rationale for the salary revision, I believe they will support our fundamental premise that a Minister must be paid a salary close to what his private sector counterpart holding equivalent responsibility is earning. But we must clearly show the nexus between their own future and having honest and competent people in Government. No group of Singaporeans is as crucial to Singapore's continued peace and prosperity as the team that makes up the Cabinet. It is this team which manages Singapore and determines the quality of your life. We need 17 members to make up this team - Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Senior Minister and Ministers. I have only 14. Mr Dhanabalan will be leaving at the end of this year. Dr Yeo Ning Hong has served me notice to leave in six months' time. That will reduce my team to 12. We must have the best people for Cabinet. Their policies and actions will determine whether Singaporeans continue to enjoy better jobs, better housing and better quality of life, or whether the country goes downhill and renders Singaporeans jobless and poor. We are looking for people who, if they are not in politics, would eventually be Permanent Secretaries, Chairmen or Chief Executive Officers of large companies. The Minister's job is more onerous and will have greater impact on Singaporeans' livelihood and life-style than even the CEO of the largest company in Singapore. He should not earn much less than CEOs of top companies. If a CEO and his management team make bad business decisions, and cause the company to go bankrupt, only the shareholders, employees and creditors will suffer. But if the economy is booming, their suffering will be short-lived. The employees, for example, can get alternative employment easily. But if the Prime Minister and his Cabinet mismanage the country, and bankrupt the economy, it is not easy for Singaporeans to seek alternative employment, or to migrate. Their suffering will be long and intolerable. I once asked Dr Tony Tan what was the difference between his present job as Chairman of OCBC and his former appointment as Minister for Education. He put it succinctly. In OCBC, he makes more decisions everyday than when he was in the Ministry of Education. But each decision is a relatively small one, affecting only a small number of people. In the Ministry, most decisions are big ones, affecting a large number of people and for life. Study why some countries do well and others do not. You will see that the major explanation for the difference in performance is the quality of Government - its competence, integrity and dedication to the people. It is invidious for me to make this point by citing examples. But you can cast your mind near and far and draw your own conclusions. Singaporeans have seen their standard of living rise year after year since 1959. That is not a random outcome, a fluke. It is because of honest and effective leadership. If I am unable to recruit honest and able men and women into Cabinet, I cannot maintain the same high degree of honesty and competence. The standard of Government will go down, and with it, the standard of living of Singaporeans. The proficiency of Government is increasingly recognised as a major factor determining a country's economic health. BERI (Business Environment Risk Intelligence) studied 47 countries and ranked Singapore second, just after Switzerland. Is it any wonder why Switzerland, despite its lack of natural resources and having a small and multi-lingual and multi-religious population, enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world? My biggest responsibility is to ensure that Singapore continues to have a proficient Government. It is not an easy responsibility to discharge. Despite our publicly-announced policy to pay market wages for Ministers, comparable to what top civil servants and executives earn, few people want to take on the job. Instead of getting more people to join the Cabinet, I am suffering a loss. Dhanabalan and Yeo Ning Hong are not leaving for reasons of pay. They have never complained about their salaries and are not seeking better-paid jobs in the private sector. But their vacancies will be more difficult to fill if we require potential Ministers to take a substantial pay-cut from their present jobs. I have approached several people with ministerial potential to stand for election as MPs. They have declined. They did not want to change their life-style and lose their privacy. This loss of privacy is not factored into the salary. I do not think you can put a value to it. If a person values his privacy, you can pay him much more, but I do not think he would come in. It will become even more difficult to persuade able Singaporeans to shoulder the burden of state and become public figures if Ministers' salaries are lower than what they can earn in the private sector. I have heard comments that Ministers should be paid basic wages, or modest wages, as service in such high offices should be driven by the desire to work for the country and not for pecuniary interest. I find this argument idealistic and lacking touch with reality. Ours is a situation where potential Ministers have to be persuaded to join us. Yes, altruism is important and a person must not join the Government just because the pay is attractive. There must be that extra in him. But even if a person is driven by idealism, there still has to be basic parities to attract him or her into politics and high office. Precisely because we have peace and prosperity, and enjoyed robust economic growth, the opportunity cost of taking up public office has gone up. It is not just a loss of personal privacy in public office. Vast opportunities await the able and talented in the private sector, and not just in Singapore. Opportunities abound in the region. China alone offers tremendous opportunities for the enterprising, especially if they are also proficient in the Chinese language. There is also Vietnam. India will also offer vast opportunities. Not all who venture into China or into Vietnam, or later into India, will make it rich. But many will. Already, many have given up settled jobs for the excitement and rewards of venturing overseas. Take, for example, Ong Chit Chung. He was an academic. He resigned as Parliamentary Secretary to head a company which has interest in expanding its activities outside Singapore. Ow Chin Hock too has just resigned from the University after serving nearly 22 years. As the PRC Chinese would say, he has "plunged into the ocean" (xia hai ). Another example is Tan Cheng Bock. Besides being a general practitioner and an MP, he is also Chairman of a company with interests in investment and manufacturing outside Singapore. I hope Tan Cheng Bock will not mind if I reveal that he earns more than a Minister. And I know many successful lawyers in the 50s, people whom I know personally, who earn much more than a Minister or the Prime Minister. The robust regional developments are making my job of assembling a good team in Cabinet very difficult. It is much more difficult as compared with Senior Minister's when he was Prime Minister. Firstly, in the 1950s, the political leaders were seized with the passion for independence then prevailing in the region. Having secured independence, they had to build a nation. They had a clear historic mission. They did not have to be persuaded to come forward. Secondly, in the 1950s and 1960s, and even the 1970s, the best jobs were in the public sector. It offered good pay and job security. In the 1990s, the private sector has overtaken the public sector. It now offers more challenges and much more attractive opportunities for able men, particularly with the economic boom in the region. Thirdly, in the 1950s and 1960s, Senior Minister's catchment of political talent extended beyond Singapore to Malaya. Mine is restricted to Singapore. It is not possible to pay a Minister as much as he can command in the private sector. But the pay must be such that a younger generation of Singaporeans will consider it worthwhile to join the Government in lieu of the comforts and privacy of their present jobs and lifestyle. If we do not pay Ministers adequately, we will get inadequate Ministers. If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys for your Ministers. The people will suffer, not the monkeys. I have been in the Government long enough to know that if the Cabinet is inadequate, and worse, dishonest, disaster for the country must follow. Do not compromise your own future by playing up the politics of envy. Help me get the best team to look after your and the country's interests. [Applause].

Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg leave to withdraw the motion. Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Resolved, "That Parliament do now adjourn to a date to be fixed." - [Mr Wong Kan Seng.] Adjourned accordingly at Ten Minutes to Five o'clock pm to a date to be fixed.

asked the Minister for Trade and Industry what is the status of the ASEAN Free Trade Area.

The initiative for an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) was launched at the fourth ASEAN Summit in Singapore in January 1992. ASEAN agreed to establish the AFTA using the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) Scheme as the main mechanism within a time frame of 15 years beginning 1st Janaury 1993 with the ultimate effective tariffs ranging from 0% to 5%. While ASEAN countries had earlier committed to begin implementation on 1st January 1993, Singapore was the only country to actually implement tariff reductions on this date. Duties on a total of 373 tariff lines were reduced. Malaysia introduced notional cuts. The other ASEAN member countries were not able to implement reductions on time due to internal administrative constraints. At the 25th ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting in Singapore in October 1993, ASEAN member countries reached an agreement to operationalise the CEPT Scheme. They agreed to commence tariff reductions by 1st January 1994. This inital package would cover between 15% and 38% of member countries' total number of tariff lines. With these impending tariff cuts, MNCs would find it more attractive to invest in the ASEAN region, thereby enhancing intra-ASEAN trade. Furthermore, this also demonstrates ASEAN member countries' belief in the benefit from a free trade area, and their commitment to implementing the CEPT Scheme on schedule. Singapore is reasonably satisfied with the progress in the implementation of the CEPT Scheme. In order to facilitate businessmen and investors in their commercial plans and decisions, Singapore and others felt that it was important for the private sector to have as much information as possible on ASEAN member governments' plans for the CEPT. ASEAN countries agreed to publish all the Inclusions and Exclusions lists, as well as the full list of actual tariff reductions. The ASEAN Secretariat had since followed up and released, as scheduled, on 1st November 1993, the publications showing these lists. The private sector may make reference to these lists at the Trade Development Board. Hard, as well as software, copies of these lists may also be purchased from the ASEAN Secretariat.

asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) whether he will provide statistics on the different categories of crimes committed by foreign workers in Singapore from 1990 to 1992 and (b) whether Police is coping well in containing these crimes.

The breakdown of crimes committed by foreign workers in Singapore for the period 1990-1992 is appended below. Crimes committed by foreign workers account for about 3-4% of total crimes reported. Furthermore, most of the offences of murder, aggravated hurt, rioting and robbery, committed by them involved victims who were also foreigners. There has been a recent increase in crimes committed at construction sites, including theft and murder. Police believe that these crimes are committed by foreigners (not necessarily workers) who came to Singapore on social visit passes and who target construction sites for their crimes. Police is monitoring this closely. (b) As there is no discernible trend suggesting increase in crimes committed by foreign workers, Police can cope and are of the view that the situation is under control. BREAKDOWN OF CRIMES COMMITTED BY FOREIGN WORKERS FOR SELECTED OFFENCES IN SINGAPORE FOR THE PERIOD 1990 - 1993 _________________________________________________________________ OFFENCE YEAR 1990 1991 1992 _________________________________________________________________ Murder 2 4 1 Aggravated Hurt 23 11 17 Rioting 7 4 4 Rape 4 1 5 Outraging Modesty 27 24 26 Robbery 17 17 11 Snatch Theft 1 3 0 _________________________________________________________________ TOTAL NO. OF CRIMES RECORDED _________________________________________________________________ Murder 44 50 42 Aggravated Hurt 426 426 449 Rioting 199 189 168 Rape 111 74 80 Outraging Modesty 749 783 834 Robbery 1577 1404 1066 Snatch Theft 999 678 669 _________________________________________________________________ PERCENTAGE OF CRIMES COMMITTED BY FOREIGN WORKERS _________________________________________________________________ Murder 4.5 8.0 2.4 Aggravated Hurt 5.4 2.4 3.8 Rioting 3.5 2.1 2.4 Rape 3.6 1.4 6.3 Outraging Modesty 3.6 3.1 3.1 Robbery 1.1 1.2 1.0 Snatch Theft 0.1 0.4 0.0 _________________________________________________________________ Source: Singapore Police Force.

asked the Minister for Health (a) how many foreign nationals sought medical treatment in Singapore from 1989 to 1993 (up to the latest convenient date); (b) what is the estimated amount they spent on consultation fees, medication and hospitalisation for the same period; (c) what will be the trend and impact of foreign patients on Singapore's health care system; and (d) whether all these external factors have been taken into account in charting our health care system.

About 11,000 foreign nationals come to Singapore specifically to seek medical care and are admitted into hospitals. This is equivalent to approximately 3% of all public and private sector hospital admissions. This figure has not fluctuated much over the past three years. We do not have the data on foreigners who come to seek outpatient care. Foreign nationals spent an average of $4,000 for each hospitalisation, inclusive of both the hospital and doctors' charges. Foreigners who use public sector hospitals are charged at more than the full cost of treatment. Foreign nationals who come to Singapore for medical treatment therefore constitute only a small proportion of total patient load in Singapore. As such, they do not impact significantly on our health care system. All external factors, including projections on foreigners seeking medical treatment in Singapore, are taken into account in the national planning of health services and health manpower.

asked the Minister for Trade and Industry how many local companies have benefitted from the Venture Capital Scheme since the scheme was implemented; and whether there are plans to expand the scheme.

The EDB Venture Capital (VC) Scheme was introduced in 1985. The objective was to pool together the financial resources from the private sector businesses and individuals, and channel them to start up technology-based companies and expand promising local companies. To-date, the EDB VC programme has invested in 21 Singapore companies (S$12.6 million) and three Singapore VC funds (S$16 million). More importantly, the EDB VC Scheme has led the way to the growth of a substantial VC industry in Singapore. Singapore Companies in the VC Programme There are now 21 VC fund management groups and more than 27 active corporate investors managing about S$2.6 billion between them. As at 30th September 1993, 142 Singapore companies received VC funding, of which, 14 companies are public-listed with an aggregate market capitalisation of S$3.4 billion and 28 are Singapore-based, seed or early stage projects. Further Incentives to Promote Venture Capital The Pioneer Service Status and the VC Incentive were introduced in 1986 to provide tax exemption for VC funds and to enable capital losses in VC to be offset against taxable income. The Pioneer Service Status require a percentage of the funds to be invested in start-up projects in Singapore. Todate, 14 VC funds have been awarded Pioneer Service status. The VC Incentive has been awarded to 19 companies of which five are for Singapore projects. In 1992, the training of VC fund management professionals was included for funding under the Initiative in new Technology (INTECH) Scheme. One award has since been given. Earlier this year, the tax incentives for VC were further enhanced. A new incentive was introduced under Section 13H of the Income Tax Act. It allowed VC companies with approved investments having linkages with Singapore to enjoy tax exemption for gains from the sale of their investments, dividend income from overseas investments and interest income from overseas convertible loan stock. The VC incentive under the Economic Expansion Incentives (Relief from Income Tax) Act was also amended recently to relieve the investor the burden of having to set up a separate holding company for each VC investment. Further Expansion of Scheme EDB is discussing with several fund management groups on the establishment of new VC funds totalling some S$200 million. In addition to fund availability, VC investors will bring with them their network of contacts, knowledge of industry trends and professional management expertise including advice on business strategies and financial matters. With the formation of more new VC funds and the success of an increasing number of VC-based local companies, we can expect more and more Singapore companies to accept VC funding for their growth.

asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) how many wife-battering cases were reported from 1983 to 1992 and of them, how many were prosecuted; (b) what are the reasons for non-prosecution; and (c) what training police officers receive to deal with domestic violence cases.

Between January 1989 and October 1993, there were 43 reported cases of domestic violence where the wife is the victim of an offence of voluntarily causing hurt by Dangerous Weapons or Voluntarily Causing Grievous Hurt. (Statistics for the preceding period are not available.). Police view seriously all cases of domestic violence especially where grievous hurt is caused. Police will prosecute the offenders where there is sufficient evidence. Of the 43 cases I mentioned, 18 resulted in prosecution. Police were unable to prosecute in the other 25 cases for various reasons. For example, in some cases the victim refused to co-operate with Police to go for medical examination and in other cases, complainants made police reports apparently to buttress their case for divorce. As for the training of Police officers, they are trained to handle such cases in their basic training courses at the Police Academy. They are also taught counselling and communications skills and crisis intervention techniques.

asked the Minister for Home Affairs if he will state (i) the number of incest cases reported from 1983 to 1992 and (ii) the ethnic background of the victims and their age range.

In the last 10 years, 41 cases of incest were reported. Details on the ethnic background and age of the victims in the cases over the last 5 years are given below. (Such details for the other years are not available.). BREAKDOWN OF INCEST VICTIMS BY RACE AND AGE-GROUP FOR THE PERIOD 1989-1993 (OCT) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ YEAR 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Race CHI MAL IND TOTAL CHI MAL IND TOTAL CHI MAL IND TOTAL CHI MAL IND TOTAL CHI MAL IND TOTAL AGE-GROUP (years) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Below 15 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 3 1 1 2 1 1 15 - 19 0 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 20 - 24 0 1 1 0 0 0 25 - 29 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 30 and above 1 1 0 0 0 0 TOTAL 1 1 1 3 2 1 0 3 1 1 3 5 3 2 1 6 3 0 1 4 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Source: Singapore Police Force.

asked the Minister for Finance (a) if he will state the absolute number and percentage of female civil servants who are (i) single, (ii) married, (iii) divorced and (iv) widowed; (b) what would be the increase in dollar terms and as a percentage of the total payroll if female civil servants were awarded the same medical benefits as their male counterparts; and (c) what is the number of female civil servants with spouses also in the civil service.

The breakdown of women civil servants by marital status is as follows: Status Number % Single 11,054 34.3 Married 20,078 62.2 Divorced 544 1.7 Widowed 587 1.8 ______ _____ 32,263 100.0 ====== ===== If women civil servants were accorded the same medical benefits as their male counterparts, the estimated increase in medical subsidy is $8.1 million or about 0.4% of total payroll. There are about 940 women officers whose spouses are also in the Civil Service. Annexes - ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICE, POLITICAL, JUDICIAL AND OTHER STATUTORY APPOINTMENTS (Cols. 1277 - 1282) BENCHMARKS, PRE & POST 1994 RANKINGS, AVERAGE 1987 & 1991 MONTHLY INCOME OF THE TOP THREE LOCAL EXECUTIVES IN A SELECTION OF COMPANIES AND PROFESSIONAL FIRMS (Cols. 1283 - 1290)