EDITORIAL - You get what you pay for

This can’t just be coincidence. A comparison of pay scales in Asia showed that countries with the highest-paid public servants also have the cleanest and most efficient governments. A report noted that public servants of Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are paid even higher than their counterparts in the United States and Europe. The three Asian countries are known for their highly efficient and graft-free bureaucracies.

Leaders of Singapore, where the prime minister’s gross annual pay is the equivalent of $600,000, have often defended the fat paychecks received by the city-state’s public servants. You get what you pay for; attractive re-muneration entices talent and discou-rages corruption, the Singaporeans point out. This has been true in Hong Kong, famed for its professional bureaucracy, where Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa earns $800,000 annually – double the $400,000 received by US President George W. Bush. Compare that to the annual salary of President Arroyo – the equivalent of $24,000.

In the perpetually cash-strapped Philippine government, a salary increase for public servants is often the last priority in planning the national budget. The meager pay has not stopped the nation’s best and brightest from joining the government, but they constitute a minuscule fraction of the bureaucracy. Public service in this country requires self-sacrifice. But how many people can think of sacrificing for national interest when they worry about putting decent food on the table, providing adequate shelter for their family and giving their children quality education? Such concerns turn the bureaucracy into a fertile ground for corruption.

Even if national leaders finally decide to give public servants a significant increase in remuneration, there is bound to be opposition from those who think the bureaucracy is too corrupt and inefficient to deserve a hefty raise. Change, however, has to start somewhere. One day when the nation can afford it, we have to consider the performance of the well-paid bureaucrats of Asia, compare the status of their Philippine counter-parts, and make our move.