High Earners In Civil Service

If you hear someone say that civil servants don't earn a lot when compared to the private sector, tell him he's not entirely correct.

Ask him whether he knows about the elite Administrative Service.

Chances are he'll look puzzled, or even start wondering if the service is about doing mundane clerical administrative work.

The truth. You can find some of the highest earners in the Administrative Service.

No, I'm not talking about cabinet ministers. They hold political appointments and are not actually part of the Civil Service (though their pay is quite astounding too, but that's another topic).

In the Administrative Service, you'll find specialists and policy makers who are groomed to lead government agencies. The super high flyers move on to become CEOs of statutory boards, and Deputy Secretaries and Permanent Secretaries of government ministries.

They are the de facto leaders in the Civil Service. The elites.

After retirement, some of them move on to lead big GLCs, e.g. former Head of Civil Service Lee Ek Tieng is a director of SPH.

High earners. You can be sure that officers in the Administrative Service are paid well. In fact, very well.

According to a recent speech by Minister In-Charge of Civil Service Mr Teo Chee Hean, officers at the lowest "superscale" salary grade (SR9) are set to receive a total of $372,000 to $384,000 this year.

Some of these officers are only in their early 30s, I reckon.

Salaries for those at the MR4 level - these are typically senior Permanent Secretaries - are set at $1.6 million.

Are these salaries comparable to those in investment banking, the industry that pays astronomical compensation? You bet.

Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew even name dropped a couple of big investment banks when he said this:

"So for the average family earning S$1,500-S$3,000, we are talking of astronomical figures but for people like me in government, to deal with the money which we have accumulated by the sweat of our brow over the last 40 years, you have to pay the market rate or the man will up stakes and join Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs and you would have an incompetent man and you would have lost money by the billions."

http://www.salary.sg/2007/high-earne...civil-service/

New salaries have just been announced. See http://www.salary.sg/2007/pay-rise-for-government-leaders/

As mentioned previously, I am not a high flyer, but my sister was a scholarship holder sent to Oxford and her hubby is now the CEO of a major statutory board. Never talk about salary so do know specifics but I know about how they are recruited. Also top civil servants travel first class on airlines. Brother-in-law mentioned once that sometimes, he is the only person in 1st class.

Most of them are chosen after A-levels - with top marks, top extra-curricular activities (or CCA as they are called now), and high intelligence (they are sent for IQ tests), they are sent all expenses paid to top US and British universities.

However,it is good to note that top performing civil servants from other sectors eg the SAF, are also now being recruited mid-career into the admin service.

Sorry, error in 2nd sentence - should be "do NOT know specifics about his salary".

so govt's theory of paying the highest salary similar to what investment banks pay to acquire best talent will not hold ground now that Lehman Brothers is gone and ML already lost their independence. You pay so much money to people and still they will manage to bring down the whole bank and worst the global economy. what an irony...

it is a myth that renumeration positively correlates with intelligience, capabilities and other measures of non-monetary attributes..

i wonder if the current worldwide financial turmoil will cause the s'pore civil service to re-adjust the pay of these high flyers. Keito made a good point. morever, how many of these so called high-flyers are good enough to actually survive in the private sector is anybody's guess. only time will tell.

woah, it will take me 30years to earn their annual salary at the age of 30

yeah the sense of proportion can be bewildering. we lesser mortals can never understand it. let it be.

There's alot of internal politics in the civil service especially at the higher echelons, or those near the superscale grades. The scholars are paid lots to hold the fort, those who are not scholars fight and step on one another to get close to the top. Eg, force out mid-career switchers, unco-operative, withold information etc. Some managers even remove your job duties to remove you altogether by passing the jobs to vendors/private businesses. So who does the work? The private sector. Of course, such things also happen in the private sector...but if you think about it, these people are taking taxpayer's monies!

My personal take is, Singapore is a country where the government employs people to keep itself as government by hiring many people and paying them tons to keep their 'loyalty'. Try removing their salaries and these 'parasites' will start an exodus.

Don't even think about patriotism. We should be glad that the people here are happy with their lives. Otherwise don't even think that people are going to keep quiet while you collect gold coins in your backyard.

Don't think people don't know, people just don't want to bother.