Workers' Party AHPETC: Key Lapses (AGO report)
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WP's response:
The lapses flagged in the Workers’ Party’s running of Aljunied-Houngang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC) will be addressed when Parliament sits on Thursday (Feb 12), said the town council’s chairman Sylvia Lim.
In the meantime, she urged members of the public to “look beyond the headlines and the summaries” and pore through the details of the AGO’s report to “have a better understanding of the issues”.
“I think it’s better for people to go in with an open mind, rather than me trying to preempt certain matters,” said Ms Lim, who was speaking to reporters at her Meet-the-People session this evening (Feb 9), hours after the AGO made public its audit findings on AHPETC’s accounts for FY2012-13. The AGO was directed by Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam to carry out the audit after independent auditors said they were unable to express an opinion on the town council’s financial statements for the second straight year.
Ms Lim, who is Workers’ Party chairman, added: “I would prefer if people read (the report) in totality and I think from there, they will get a much better picture of what’s happening.”
In its report made public at 4pm today, the AGO had listed lapses in governance and compliance by AHPETC, including failing to transfer monies into sinking fund bank accounts, as required by the Town Councils Financial Rules. AHPETC was also found to have inadequately managed conflicts of interest when it came to procuring services, the AGO said.
http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/read-through-agos-full-report-have-better-understanding-issues-sylvia-lim -
GE is near…time to put up as much damage as possible
this is just a small tree compare to the other big white tree -
Lapses shld be investigated regardless of GE or not.
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raysusan:
How so?GE is near...time to put up as much damage as possible
this is just a small tree compare to the other big white tree
https://berthahenson.wordpress.com/2015 ... -finances/ -
Good luck trying to take back Aljunied GRC armed with just this AGO report. :snooze:
Bertha Henson:
Rats! Don't AIM your YOG at too High Notes or you will live to Lehman it when it ponds on you.What happens now? The Finance Minister has the report and he surely has to do something with it right? What? Punish it with some penalty that will also rebound on the residents? Send in reinforcements to …hmmm…help a political party he doesn’t belong to? I suppose the G and the PAP MPs are now sharpening their knives. But you know the phrase….people in glass houses…They should hope/know that their own TC finances are in good shape before throwing stones.
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Bertha read WP soooooo well. Couldn't stop laffing at this fictitious dialogue:
WP: When we got Aljunied and Punggol East, we had so much to do to align everything. Remember there were boundary changes as well? We’re inexperienced. In any case, we wanted the previous managing agents to stay but they wouldn’t even extend their contract by six months. Then some of our staff involved in the handover resigned.
AGO: Aiyoh, you were given six months lead-time and you still couldn’t settle everything? You didn’t make sure you looked at what documents were handed over and kept them safe?
WP: Plus there were all these complications about what we owe or can claim from HDB, NEA and the CCC. These fellas seemed to be deliberately stalling or rejecting our stuff. As for service and conservancy charges, we relied on an IT system to account for service and conservancy charges but it had a bug in it. We needed some historical data from the old vendor but could only get some bits – not everything. What made it worse was that the silly G wanted a complicated format so we had to do some manual work. That’s how the mistakes came about. Anyway, it’s been cleared up now.
AGO: Oi. You could have followed up with these people.
WP: As for the managing agent, we already know they wear two hats – so it’s not as though we were clueless. The G should lay out some clear specs on this thing called Related Third Party transactions.
AGO: Errr, it’s in the Singapore Financial Reporting standards.
WP: But we’ve noted what the AGO said. In fact, we had already started making some changes and then had to stop when the AGO stepped in. We’re such a small outfit but we still went on looking after the TC even as we were helping the AGO.
:rotflmao: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: -
pirate:
:udaman:
Rats! Don't AIM your YOG at too High Notes or you will live to Lehman it when it ponds on you.
:salute: :salute:
YOG, High Notes and Lehman = not that bad la...
Ponds was last GE issue. Bridge under Pond liao la...
Now is Columbarium, Rats, AIM, ISA, FreeMyInternet, ReturnMyCPF, LGBT/377A, etc..
http://sggeneralelections2016.blogspot.sg/ -
jetsetter:
This calls for a #SG50 celebration. Exciting start (and we are only barely into February)!
:udaman:pirate:
Rats! Don't AIM your YOG at too High Notes or you will live to Lehman it when it ponds on you.
:salute: :salute:
YOG, High Notes and Lehman = not that bad la...
Ponds was last GE issue. Bridge under Pond liao la...
Now is Columbarium, Rats, AIM, ISA, FreeMyInternet, ReturnMyCPF, LGBT/377A, etc..
http://sggeneralelections2016.blogspot.sg/
Love all these glass houses our politicians built. -
Jennifer:
Lapses shld be investigated regardless of GE or not.
Totally agree.
Although WP said: \"What is clear (from the AGO findings) is that no money has been found to be missing, nor has there been any criminal or dishonest activity uncovered. Instead, the observations show mistakes and omissions due to inadvertence, human error, IT system constraints and a lack of experience in dealing with certain scenarios.\"
AGO responded by saying that \"AHPETC's broad conclusion cannot be derived\" from the audit.
The terms of reference of this special audit were not specifically asked to look for \"fraud\". Therein lies the problem...
Under the Town Councils Act, KBW may appoint a person to step in when a town council has either failed to keep the common property \"in a state of good and serviceable repair or in a proper and clean condition\", or when there is \"imminent danger to the health or safety of residents\".
Indeed, this audit has shown that the existing Town Councils Act needs some good tightening.
More parliamentary wayang on the way...day after tomorrow... :siam:
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