Bonus For What?

Bonus For What?

When Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the government is set to actively engage and leverage on the new media at the next General Election, one assumed he was finally hiring Jack Neo to come up with a response to the heavily downloaded “harmless” podcast. Instead, they resorted to Stalinesque revisionism by deleting online articles such as the Straits Times or ChannelNewsAsia write-up on the Northwest Community Development Council (North West CDC) bonus exposé.

Fortunately a cached copy still exists, documenting the pathetic effort of Mayor Teo Ho Pin to whitewash the generous 8 month bonuses given to a Senior Manager and a Deputy General Manager.

Teo Ho Pin gained brief notoriety in November last year when it was revealed that, under his chairmanship of the Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council (part of North West CDC), $8 million were invested in Minibonds linked to bankrupt US investment bank Lehman Brothers and the now worthless Merrill Lynch Jubilee Series 3 LinkEarner Notes. As the coordinating chairman for the 14 PAP town councils, he also takes the rap for about $16 million invested in troubled structured products by 8 town councils. That Senior Manager had better not be in charge of the finances of North West CDC.

On Monday, US President Obama called the bonus payments by insurance giant AIG an “outrage” and demanded the money be repaid or rescinded. While North West CDC has not been bailed out, they do receive an annual grant of $1 per resident living in its district for funding its programmes. Monies to be spent for helping the poor, like the miserly $200 per month rag-and-bone man Ng Kim Ngweng collects as financial aid from the ComCare Transition (CCT) fund. Not to fund civil servants for pastry cooking lessons in France. Or reward employees that made bad bets on toxic investments.

But the salt rubbed into the wound must surely be Teo Ho Pin’s limp justification for the unholy dispensation of taxpayers’ dollars: “The economy only start to worsen during the last 3 months of 2008. The performance of the economy during the first 9 months is still not bad. We have to look at the matter from the entire year’s perspective. Hence, it is not unreasonable for CDC staff to receive 8 months of bonuses.” Hello, you civil service types were effectively in denial until late 2008, the bleeding started much earlier with the subprime crisis: think Lehman Brothers.

And then there’s the lie from the People’s Association that only staff at the lower end of the salary range receive a higher performance bonus.

Try to spot the fat cats in the FY 2007 Annual Report mugshot. Hint: they are the ones who can afford Tan Yong Soon’s idea of a 5 week holiday, twice over.

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