Thursday, July 22, 2021

A General can make Beautiful Plans – But without Guys Like Us To Execute, Nothing happens – Retired Warrant Office Yeo Lay King

 

I have to confess that I had high hopes during national service. I had a strange fantasy of being an officer and then, somehow proving myself in a combat situation and climbing the ranks. I guess part of it was from growing up in the UK, where it was expected of any young man with A-levels entering as an officer if he chose the armed forces. Another part of it was from watching movies, where officers seemed to get a better life than the average grunt.

So, when I got to admit that I was a little disappointed that I didn’t make it to OCS and going to what was then called “School of Infantry Specialist” (SISPEC) felt like second best. However, as I was going through specialist training, I received an invaluable piece of advice from the then Weapon Wing second in command (2ic) in the School of Artillery. The then 1st Warrant Officer, Yeo Lay King, told us, “Gentlemen, always remember, the generals on top can draw up the most beautiful plans – but without us to execute, nothing is going to happen.”

 

These Guys Are Brilliant at Drawing Things Up On Paper

 

But we need this guy to ensure their brilliant plans are more than just sheets of paper

I didn’t know it then, but he was giving us a pearl of wisdom, which I would soon realise, nobody followed much to the detriment of the rest of society. The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), which as a citizen army, is a microcosm for the rest of society is a perfect example. In the word of my Uncle Andy, who was an officer in the SAF – “You know the army is going downhill when the officers get everything and the NCO’s, who are the backbone of the army, get nothing”

Back in my day (early nineties), the government spent a sinful amount to create the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute – Military Institute or SAFTI MI. The idea was simple (and often repeated across the board) – it was to make Singapore the regional centre for training military officers. The facilities at SAFTI-MI are supposed to be based on West Point in the USA or Sandhurst in Britain. Officer Cadets lived like university students – two to a bunk. Food at SAFTI-MI was inevitably better than it was anywhere else in the military eco-system (there’s a direct correlation between the quality of food served in a camp and the number of colonels and above and SAFTI-MI had a hold of the number of colonels walking around).

While young officers were resting two to a bunk in SAFTI-MI, we at the other “commander school,” were living many, many people to a bunk. Although, we were treated relatively well (trainees get to take on various commander roles under supervision), it was quite clear that those of us in the old Pasir Labar camp were living off the scraps of the more glorious at SAFTI-MI next door.

The comparison between the officer and NCO (or specialist as we were rebranded in Singapore) continued throughout the rest of our national services careers. I do acknowledge the differences between the Officer and NCO class and I do believe that good officers are as important to the system as good NCOs. However, while the importance of the role of the NCO as much talked about, the reality was quite different. The best example comes from the fact that a third sergeant, which is an operational rank that comes with command responsibilities, pays a grand total of $900 a month. By comparison, an officer cadet, which is to all intents and purposes, a trainee with no actual responsibilities, is paid $40 a month less (at one stage officer cadets were paid more).  

If you want to put this into the commercial context, it means that a senior technician, in charge of actually fixing things, is paid only marginally higher than a student in engineering school.

Interestingly enough, the disparity between the officer class and NCO and enlisted men would also continue into later life. Singapore has the world’s highest paid ministers. Our Prime Minister, who runs a country that is barely a suburb of New York or LA, makes at least four times more than the US president. We’re constantly told that we need to “attract talent,” because Singapore’s success in just about everything comes from letting world class people run the show and you need to pay for talent.

It’s nice idea. However, does it actually work. Well, Singapore is well run on the surface, so much so that the people who don’t have to live through the system are inevitably the ones praising it. Dig a little deeper and the story is rather different.

Let’s look at the opposite end of the scale where the guys who ensure that our world class cleanliness is actually that, are paid wages that are just ahead of slave wages. The standard reply to any suggestion that people the lower end of the scale should earn a few cents extra was inevitably “Would you be willing to pay more for your ……” (which inevitably happened anyway, because the other main costs for business, which is controlled by the people in power – i.e. rent inevitably shot up, even in a recession.)

 

Singapore CEOs are good at drawing up plans

It took the Covid-19 pandemic for us to realise that we actually needed people to do things. Someone had to clear the trash. Someone had to get our food ready for us? How have we shown the people that make our life livable our appreciation? Well, there’s now some talk about how we’re going to have a “Progressive Wage model,” which will help the guys who actually do things to double their low salaries in five years. In the meantime, rents for businesses, especially the home-grown ones, have gone up in an instant.

A year after Covid, you have the usual bureaucrats trying to get people back to the office. The answer is simple, these are the clowns trying to help ensure the landlords have a large say in things. You have people insisting that their professional service providers up the bill by two thirds but at the same time insist that they are being screwed when logistics movers send the bill and insist on being paid up front.

Unfortunately, Covid has shown us that what we considered “normal,” was not actually normal. Nobody is saying that the people who do should be given as much as the people who talk on an overnight basis. However, it is clear that the people who do things have to be respected and valued. Talking, contrary to what most bureaucrats assume, is actually the easy part. Picking up a paper and walking to the end of the room on the other hand requires energy. If we are to progress as a nation, we need to rediscover the respect and value of the people who actually do things rather than to lavish it all on the people who talk about doing things.

 

Without these guys, our homes don’t get built, we’ll travel on potholed roads etc

 

No comments

© BeautifullyIncoherent
Maira Gall