[kuasimi]

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MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew called for a sense of proportion yesterday, pointing out that the annual wage bill for ministers and all office holders is $46 million - or just 0.022 per cent of Singapore's total economic output.


It was an 'absurdity', he said, for Singaporeans to quarrel over whether ministers collectively should be paid $10 million or $20 million more, when an economy worth $210 billion was at stake

'The cure to all this talk is really a good dose of incompetent government,' he said in his first comments on impending salary increases for ministers and top civil servants. 'You get that alternative and you'll never put Singapore together again.'

Singaporeans' asset values would also disappear, he warned, adding that 'your apartment will be worth a fraction of what it is, your jobs will be in peril, your security will be at risk and our women will become maids in other people's countries'.

He said the present system of benchmarking ministers' pay to top private sector salaries was 'completely above board' and allowed the Government to recruit 'some of the very best' to lead the country

When it was put to him that people hoped for leaders who were willing to make sacrifices and who were not there for the money, he replied that these were 'admirable sentiments'. But he added that 'we live in the real world'.

His bottom line: if the Government could not pay competitive salaries, Singapore would not be able to compete and 'we're not going to live well'.


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