Are you in HR? The figures you provided are in the ball park for engineers in the civil service, defense industries and military service. A freshie engineer with good honors and NS joining the Civil service would be getting $4k-$4.5k pm. With just the ave bonus, he would be getting >$60k pa first year.

Nowadays they don't publicise the salary scales, but practicing engineers in the government and military are expected to be earning more than engineering poly lecturers (for same cohort). From below (extracted from some other forum poster) you can have a feel of the pay scale for the lecturers. A senior practicing engineer would be like a Pax 5 to Pax 4 poly lecturer. A principal or staff engineer would be like the poly Pax 3 and Pax 2.

I find it strange that people say engineers are poor. They may be "poor", but I know many are staying in condos and quite a few also have another condo earning rental income.

If husband and wife are both engineers and are in the profession for over 10 yrs, as a household they would be earning >$200k pa and save $100k pa easily.

PAX Salary Range (effective 1 Sep 2012) in all Polys -

PAX 2 : $10,920 - 14,910 / 16,900
PAX 3 : $ 7,060 - 9,670 / 10,980
PAX 4A/4E : $ 5,120 - 7,690 / 8,980
PAX 5A/5E : $ 3,750 - 5,740 / 6,740
PAX 6A/6E : $ 2,410 - 4,270 / 5,200