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Singapore The Public Bureaucracy
The government played an active role in managing the
society
and developing the economy and was the country's largest
single
employer. Government bodies and their employees fell into
two
distinct categories. The regular ministries and their
civil service
employees concentrated on recurrent and routine
administrative
tasks. The three ministries of education, health, and home
affairs
(including police, fire, and immigration) employed 62
percent
(43,000) of the 69,700 civil servants in 1988. Members of
the civil
service in the strict sense of the term were those public
employees
who were appointed by the Public Service Commission and
managed by
the Ministry of Finance's Public Service Division. Active
projects
in economic development and social engineering were
carried out by
a large number of special-purpose statutory boards and
public
enterprises, which were free from bureaucratic procedures
and to
which Parliament delegated sweeping powers. As of 1984,
there were
eighty-three statutory boards employing 56,000 persons.
About
125,000 members of the 1987 total work force were public
employees
(see Manpower and Labor
, ch. 3).
The two branches of the public service served different
functions in the political system. The civil service
proper
represented institutional continuity and performed such
fundamental
tasks as the collection of revenue, the delivery of such
goods as
potable water, and the provision of medical and
educational
services. The various quasigovernmental bodies, such as
statutory
boards, public enterprises, commissions, and councils
represented
adaptability, innovation, and responsiveness to local
conditions.
The constitutional framework of Singapore's government,
with its
Parliament, cabinet, courts, and functional ministries,
resembled
that of its British model and its peers in other countries
of the
British
Commonwealth of Nations (see Glossary). The
particular
collection of boards and councils, which included
everything from
the Central Provident Fund to the Sikh Advisory Board,
reflected
the successful adaptation of the British model to its
Southeast
Asian environment.
Public service employment carried high prestige, and
there was
considerable competition for positions with the civil
service or
the statutory boards. Civil servants were appointed
without regard
to race or religion, and selected primarily on their
performance on
competitive written examinations. The civil service had
four
hierarchical divisions and some highly ranked "supergrade"
officials. On January 1, 1988, there were 493 supergrade
officers,
who included ministerial permanent secretaries and
departmental
secretaries and constituted less than 1 percent of the
69,700 civil
servants. Division one consisted of senior administrative
and
professional posts and contained 14 percent of the civil
servants.
The mid-level divisions two and three contained educated
and
specialized workers who performed most routine government
work and
who made up the largest group of civil servants, 33 and 32
percent
of all civil servants, respectively. Division four
consisted of
manual and semiskilled workers who made up 20 percent of
employees.
In 1987, there were 3,153 appointments from the 9,249
applicants
for positions in divisions one through three; 2,200 (some
70
percent) of the appointees were women.
The Singapore public service was regarded as almost
entirely
free from corruption, a fact that in large part reflected
the
strong emphasis the national leadership placed on probity
and
dedication to national values. The Corrupt Practices
Investigation
Bureau enjoyed sweeping powers of investigation and the
unreserved
support of the prime minister. Official honesty was also
promoted
by the relatively high salaries paid to public officials;
the high
salaries were justified by the need to remove temptations
for
corruption. In a system with clear echoes of the Chinese
Confusian
tradition, and the British administrative civil service,
which
recruited the top graduates of the elite universities,
Singapore's
public service attempted, generally successfully, to
recruit the
most academically talented youth. The Public Service
Commission
awarded scholarships to promising young people for study
both in
Singapore and at foreign universities on the condition
that the
recipients join the civil service after graduation. Young
recruits
to the development-oriented statutory boards were often
given
substantial responsibilities for ambitious projects in
industrial
development or the construction of housing estates.
Officials had
greater social prestige than their peers in business;
power and
official title outranked money in the local scale of
esteem.
Data as of December 1989
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