Civil servants not underpaid

Channels should be made available to people to assess civil servants' performance. And their opinion should be an important criterion to decide civil servants' earnings, says an article in People's Daily. Excerpts:

The central government has decided to raise the pay of grassroots civil servants.

Some civil servants working in community-level offices in Beijing have complained that their monthly income of about 5,000 yuan ($830) is not enough to make ends meet. But they should not compare their income with that of professional talents working in higher-income sectors such as information technology and finance. Even if some civil servants' salary is lower than some nannies' and migrant workers', their actual earnings are much higher than those in other sectors because of the welfare and bonuses such as housing, pension, medical care and education allowance they receive.