Ah khaw, what are you up to this time?
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Yahoo! Newsroom
- Khaw Boon Wan and Sylvia Lim engage in fierce debate over AIM
deal
National Development
Minister Khaw Boon Wan’s ministerial statement in Parliament on Monday,
which touched on town councils and the PAP-owned Action Information
Management (AIM), sparked off a charged debate with some of the
fiercest arguments coming from Worker’s Party (WP) chairman Sylvia
Lim.
In rejecting the Ministry of National Development's (MND) finding
that residents’ interests had not been compromised in a deal
between PAP town councils and AIM, she questioned aspects of the
AIM deal, like the nature of AIM and the one-month termination
clause in the event the town council changed hands.
For example, she pointed out that the timing for the 2010 sale of
the IT software to AIM was questionable.
“The timing of the sale to commence a few months before the General
Elections (GE) in 2011 also calls for explanation. Was it a pure
coincidence? Or was there simply a need to sell the software
quickly, so that termination can be effected if political seats
were lost?” she said.
To this, the Minister replied in his round-up statement, “First, the TCs brought in
Deloitte & Touche (D&T) to evaluate their software, not in
the year just before the 2011 GE, but as early as June 2009.” He
added that the TCs’ software was also obsolete and was scheduled
for replacement, with the software maintenance contract with NCS
“expiring in October 2010”.
Resident’s interests at stake
Lim, who is also chairman of the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council,
also attacked the reasons given for the one-month termination
clause – she said they were “plainly unconvincing” and put
residents’ welfare at risk.
“First, no attempt was made to explain why a material change in
membership of TC should allow unilateral termination by the
contractor with one month’s notice,” she said. “The real sting of
the termination clause lay in its one-month notice period. Is a
one-month termination reasonable for a critical IT system? It is
quite clear that time is needed to develop a system of this
complexity – in the PAP’s own estimation, 18 to 24 months. Did the
PAP TCs not realise that this aspect of the AIM transaction
endangered the continuity of public services? Or perhaps that
was the intention in the case of a change in political
leadership?”
To this, Khaw replied, “There are now, as we have heard repeatedly,
two interpretations of what actually happened. AIM insisted that it
did not initiate termination and that it was the Aljunied-Hougang
TC which gave notice of its intention to use its own software. Only
on receipt of that notice did AIM then terminate the contract. The
AHTC’s version is that they believed that it would be terminated
and so decided to start sourcing for their own IT software system.
The Review Team has included the full exchange of letters in their
report, and we will let the readers draw their own
conclusion.”
Controversy over the AIM deal first erupted last December, when the
MND released its town council management report, singling out the
AHTC with a “red” rating for the latter’s handling of service and
conservancy charge (S&CC) arrears. Lim that month explained
that the town council’s audit took longer than expected because of
its need to develop a new computer and financial system from
scratch after having been informed in 2011 that the existing system
would be terminated.
Tender truly open?
Lim also questioned on Monday the open tender for the software
contract – “Was it an open tender in substance,” she
asked.
“The tender was advertised and five companies picked up the
documents. However, a closer look at the Conditions of Contract
will reveal that the specifications required each of the directors
of the tendering company to have “adequate experience with the
operations and functions of a Town Council”. I wonder how many
companies in the software business in Singapore can say that all
their directors have TC experience – perhaps only AIM?” she
said.
“The tender period was advertised as 14 days, shorter than the
minimum period of three weeks for local tenders required under the
TC Financial Rule 74(6). It was then extended by another week to
give 3 weeks. Why the initial period advertised was one week less
than the minimum was not explained at all in the MND report.”
In response, Khaw pointed out that some latitude is given to TC
managers and, in the case of the tender, the proper clearances had
been sought for the shorter time period. It was something Lim
exercised as well, Khaw said.
“The TC Financial Rules also provide latitude to TCs or their
Chairmen to waive requirement to call for tender altogether. Ms
Sylvia Lim would be familiar with this because she exercised this
latitude when her TC waived competition and appointed FM Solutions
and Services Pte Ltd (FMSS) as its Managing Agent (MA) in 2011. MND
left the appointment to her best judgement and did not object. We
have to apply the TCs Act and the TC Financial Rules fairly, evenly
and consistently,” he explained.
Furthermore, in response to concerns raised that there was a
conflict of interest when town councils deal with companies owned
by political parties, Mr Khaw pointed out that FMSS is run by a
husband-and-wife team who are long-time WP supporters. They, in
fact, “acted as assentor and proposer to the WP team of candidates
led by Mr Yaw Shin Leong to contest in Ang Mo Kio GRC in the 2006
General Election”, he said. FMSS was set up four days after the WP
won Aljunied GRC and it was given a S$5.2 million-a-year
contract.
Passengers in Cessna
In concluding her speech, Lim recalled an interesting episode from
the Parliamentary debate in 1988 when the Town Council Bill was
first presented for the Second Reading.
“At that debate, the then First Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong
justified the introduction of Town Councils as providing political
stabilisers to the political system. He said there was a need to
protect the public by ensuring that political parties which aspired
to be government should first prove that they could run a Town
Council for a constituency. He said, ‘If a new party finds itself
unexpectedly in government, it would be like an aspiring pilot
taking over an SIA jumbo jet in mid-air before he has flown solo in
a Cessna. This cannot be in the interest of passengers in the
jumbo… TCs are the Cessnas of our political system.’
“Is this what this whole AIM episode is about – ensuring that the
passengers in the Cessnas have bumpy rides or even crash
land? Does the government even care about the passengers in
the Cessnas, or are they simply collateral damage in a bigger
political game?”
In response, Khaw replied sternly, “Ms Sylvia Lim said that the PAP
is not concerned about the passengers sitting in the Cessna getting
hurt should it crash land. This is self-righteous, and – pardon me
for saying so – arrogant. Many of us in this House have been
serving Singaporeans for decades, long before she entered this
House. Please, don’t behave as if you are the only patriot in this
House.”
Lim, rising to speak right after Khaw’s round-up speech, defended
herself, “I have to take issue with his ascribing to me personal
motives of pride and arrogance because I think nothing can be
further from the truth.
“The reason why we raised this matter for public discussion and
debate is because we want to improve things for the future. So I
definitely do not accept his ascription of those motives to me
personally.”
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Yahoo! Newsroom
- WP Chairman Sylvia Lim has fired back against Dr Teo Ho Pin's
allegations
PAP Town Council
coordinating chairman Teo Ho Pin took aim at the Workers'
Party's …
The press release
even included a table charting the distinctions between the
controversial AIM transaction and WP's appointment of FMSS,
pictured below.
WP released a press statement on Thursday with a table
explaining its position
Among other things, Ho said AHPETC chairman Sylvia Lim, who is also
WP chairman, needs to explain why her town council "gave more than
$26 million of public funds in contracts to close associates", and
why it paid "significantly higher than normal" management fees than
Aljunied Town Council's previous managing agent.
Ho also accused Lim of "trying to obfuscate the public with wrong
calculations on how much FMSS charged AHTC", in reference to an
exchange between the MND and the town council, where the two
disputed the rates that were paid by AHPETC to FMSS.
Delving further into the exchange of words on rates paid, Ho said
even at Lim's raised managing agent rate of $7.58 per unit, after including commercial property,
as opposed to her initial figure of $7.01, which only factored in
residential units, the MND said the contract value over a
three-year period would amount to $15.8 million, short of the $16.8
million Lim declared to the Housing Development Board in
2012.
"Where is the missing $1 million?" he asked, also probing further
into the status of FMSS's owners, husband-and-wife team How Weng
Fan and Danny Loh, with the town council.
"Do they draw salaries as employees of the Town Council (being
General Manager and Deputy Secretary respectively)?" he asked. "As
Mr Loh and Ms How do business with the TC through FMSS which they
own and profit — do they get paid twice?"
Ho further mentioned
that the town council could have employed How directly to manage
the town in the way Hougang Town Council had done, instead of
forming a separate company.
"The WP MPs in AHTC owe it to the residents of Aljunied and
Hougang, as well as Singaporeans in general, to give full answers
to (the questions he raised)," concluded Ho.
Ho's statement follows a fiery debate on Monday evening in
Parliament between Khaw and WP chairman Sylvia Lim over
a controversial sale of the PAP Town
Councils' computer software system to a party-owned company
called Action Information Management (AIM).
The exchange eventually saw Khaw turning the tables on WP, drawing
scrutiny on the AHPETC's transactions with FMSS from the time the
party took over Aljunied GRC in May 2011.
