nfk

There is certainly much public outcry over the spade of controversies surrounding the Nkf ceo's salary, his astounding 10-12mth bonuses, the first class travels, and oh yes, the now-infamous $990 gold-tap. I doesn't feel too good to know that the donations that you have once gone around collecting in the form of a NKF donation card has probably found their way to cushioning T.T Durai's "general wellbeing". Obviously I certainly don't feel as outraged as some others may feel towards this issue. It is inevitable that with the huge amount that Nkf is rolling in, some within the organisation may have had the fringe benefits in someway or the other. Pinches from the left and right perhaps?

Anyways, I will still continue to donate to Nkf, but maybe not concentrate much funds there. Actually due to the media exposure that Nkf has been received, it surely has no lack of avenues of funds. It seems to be monopolizing the donation market, so to speak. Some charity organisations rely on flag days to raise their funds, where every cent of donation is gathered painstakingly. However, Nkf's donation hotline made it so easy for the public to donate to them, and it is quite saddening to see that other charity organisations do not actually have this means to store up their funds.

What shocked me more was the blatant means that Nkf has done to fend off alleged accusations that it has been storing up more funds than it claimed. But this so-called accusations turn out to have bear sometruth in themselves. Since T.T durai had claimed that he felt that he had done nothing wrong, then how does he justify the need to not have more transparency on the way the funds are channelled to the patients? I think it is the Nkf's cloak of secrecy about how it uses its funds that astounds most people, now that they know that its CEO receives such a fat paycheck despite the economic downturn.

On the other hand, it has to be noted that 600k is really not too shockingly huge a amount for a CEO. The Ceo of DBS gets a paycheck of 7mil a yr..and that makes Durai's paycheck only a fraction of his. But what makes the whole issue very touchy is because NFK is a charity organisation and thus funded by public money. So really, it is ineveitable that people are more concerned about how their money is utilised. For such a heavy responsibility to run a big organisation, we don't actually expect its CEO to be earning 5k a month right? But it is the lack of transparency and the fat bonus that really baffles most. The time where Nkf was able to garner the highest amount of donations was during the economic downturn. Everyone was feeling the heat of the economy and may have tightened their own belts to donate more. There is surely a tinge of betrayal when they believed that inconviencing themselves a little to extend help to someone else, but in the end, find out that all they had done was probably contributed to a trickle of the fat bonus. Sure sucks..

Sigh..actually there is no need to get so fired up. Yes, the initial outrage. But just let the feeling die down. No point going vandalising NFK's property, the issue is still there, not as if the problem evaporizes. Probably it could be a blessing in disguise. Now everyone will spread more of their donation funds across several charity organisations and more could benefit as well. Things happen for a reason, no matter how elusive that reason may seem now. So i was thinking, maybe...maybe this can be the something good that emerges from this entire episode.

There is a silver lining on every dark cloud, apparently.