Pritam Singh questions roles of CDCs, says Singaporeans find mayors' salaries ‘outrageous’

• The roles of Community Development Councils (CDCs) can be done by government agencies or other statutory boards, Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh said
• He noted that S$75 million allocated during the Budget last year was equal to the CDCs’ reserves for the 2018 financial year
• Mr Singh also said it may be time to relook the highly paid roles of mayors

SINGAPORE — Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh questioned whether the Government was "trying to find some way to make the Community Development Councils (CDCs) relevant" by placing them in charge of a voucher scheme in this year's Budget. 

He also proposed that the Government review if there is a need to have full-time mayors heading these CDCs, seeing there has been public criticism that a mayor’s job scope does not warrant a high pay.

Mr Singh, who is also a Member of Parliament (MP) for Aljunied Group Representation Constituency, was speaking on Wednesday (Feb 24) at the start of an eight-day parliamentary debate on the Budget 2021 statement for the new financial year.

Voicing what he said were the views of the public, he asked if the roles of CDCs can be performed by other organisations such as the government ministries or the statutory boards since the reach of each CDC can differ widely.

Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat announced last week in his Budget speech that all Singaporean households would receive S$100 worth of vouchers each to be used at participating neighbourhood shops and hawker centres.

These vouchers will be given out by the CDCs, which are grassroots bodies formed in 1997 under the People’s Association (PA) to strengthen community bonds and foster social cohesion. 

A S$150 million grant will be given to the CDCs to support the voucher scheme.

Mr Singh said, however, that there are other organisations more suitable to take charge of this programme.

For example, the Citizens’ Consultative Committee (CCC) is a grassroots organisation in each ward or constituency that is widely known to have representatives of the various merchants’ associations, he said.

“It would follow that these local bodies like CCCs are even more closely connected to the ground than the five CDCs, rendering the CDCs’ role in the voucher scheme potentially superfluous,” Mr Singh said.

“It would appear to me as if the Government is trying to find some way to make the CDCs relevant in view of their relative absence in the public mindshare.”

The Workers’ Party chief also asked the Government to clarify if the vouchers can be used at larger supermarket chains, since allowing that would risk bypassing the neighbourhood shops in the heartlands that are supposed to benefit from this scheme.

MAYORS’ SALARIES

Each of the five CDCs is headed by a mayor, all of whom are elected MPs:

• Ms Low Yen Ling (South West CDC)

• Ms Denise Phua (Central Singapore CDC)

• Mr Desmond Choo (North East CDC)

• Mr Alex Yam (North West CDC)

• Mr Fahmi Aliman (South East CDC)

Based on a 2017 review of salaries for political appointment holders, mayors are paid S$660,000 a year, inclusive of variable pay and bonuses. This is on top of their annual MP allowance of S$192,500.

Mr Singh said that there is scope for a serious review of the need for having full-time mayors.

“The CDCs have come into the spotlight after the last General Election because many Singaporeans are of the view that the salaries of mayors are outrageous, principally because they are not perceived to be commensurate with a mayor’s roles and functions,” he said.

“Others simply don’t know what the CDCs do.”

Last year, in the first of four Budget statements called the Unity Budget, the Government had allocated S$20 million to the CDCs. 

This was later increased to S$75 million a month later in the Resilience Budget, the second for the year. This sum, Mr Singh noted, was equal to all the reserves of the CDCs for the 2018 financial year.

He then asked how much of the S$150 million set aside for the latest voucher scheme will be allocated for the vouchers themselves and how much of it was allocated for the administrative cost of the programme.

Mr Heng, who is also Finance Minister, is expected to respond to the points raised by MPs in his round-up speech on Friday.

During the swearing-in ceremony for mayors in September last year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that although CDCs often had a low profile, their contributions to the Covid-19 crisis have proven vital with more than 70 initiatives rolled out between February and June last year.

He said then: “(The CDCs) can deliver services with a human touch, in a way that government agencies that operate on a national scale try very hard to do, but will find it harder to do.”