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- 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.
