I’m quite appalled by all the senseless attacks directed at the civil service on internet forums, after the media reported that the civil service would cut pay : see the Channel NewsAsia article here.

It’s really a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.  If the civil service didn’t decide on pay cuts, people would have complained.  Now that the civil service has decided on pay cuts, people are complaining that the cuts don’t go far enough, that ministers and top civil service officers should forgo their salaries entirely, that it is possible for top officers to survive on a fraction of their salary, etc.

I deeply sympathise with my former colleagues. 

This economic downturn is largely caused by external factors beyond the control of the Government / civil service.  Furthermore, unlike a regular business which winds down in bad times, the business of government goes on even in bad times — and I would add that public officers often have to work harder when the economy is doing badly because they have to devise and implement new policies to cushion the impact of the downturn on local businesses and the man-in-the-street, and because the ministries would be loathe to add to their headcount even if everyone is overworked.  A couple of years ago the civil service (very stupidly I think) implemented an across-the-board freeze on hiring because of the Asian economic crisis, and I noticed that since that time the average working hours for public officers (at least in the Ministry of Health) shot through the roof (I used to have to regularly work from home, from about 10 pm onwards till past midnight).  Therefore, I don’t see why public officers should generally be penalised by a pay cut.

By the above, I am not saying that our public officers are perfect, that all public officers deserve what they are currently paid, or that the civil service has no fat to trim.  I think the civil service can cut back its expenditure on useless feel-good, pat-on-the-back projects such as balanced scorecards, etc. which attempt to create a more focused and innovative civil service but which, I think, only needlessly kill trees, and generate more work for the hapless lowly public officer and more income for consultants.  And of course, all those public officers who happily drive these useless projects — especially the superscalers — should either be redeployed to do real work or axed (and here I freely admit that I am making this comment because of some very unhappy personal experiences with senior public officers who have lived a good part of their civil service life in la-la land).

In fact, one of the few justifications that I can see for this pay cut (though I am not sure if it was one of the planning considerations) is that it serves as a reminder to public officers — especially those from upper-middle / upper income backgrounds, and I believe that a fair number of officers who occupy the upper rungs of the civil service do hail from that privileged background — that there are many men-in-the-street who would suffer quite badly in this economic downturn, and that they cannot go about their usual duties and devise / implement their usual policies, or trot about in la-la land, without consideration for the man-in-the-street.

But I think those calls for public officers to forgo their salaries entirely, and other similarly extreme suggestions, are total nonsense.  Sure, a public officer who earns $300,000 a year can probably survive on a tenth of that salary.  But does anyone seriously think that, by paying only $30,000 annually to our more competent public officers, you can get sound government ?  The civil service is already imperfect as it is.  Staffing it with even less competent officers who are prepared to accept lower pay (for lack of ability to secure a better job) is not a viable solution.

As for me, I’m just glad to have left the civil service, and thankful to be blessed with a job which appears fairly secure for now.