Posted by theonlinecitizen
on May 7,
2008
Leong Sze Hian
& Andrew Loh
All 14 town
councils run by the People’s Action Party (PAP) will not be
increasing their Service and Conservancy (S&C) charges this
year.
- Channel NewsAsia,
“PAP
town councils to freeze S&C charges this
year” (February 28, 2008)
Barely two and a half
months later, on May 5 2008, this is what ‘officials’ at the
PAP-run Aljunied Town Council (TC) said:
Officials also
said they will consider raising the conservancy charges for the
dirtiest precincts to cover the extra work that goes into
maintaining them …
- “Aljunied trash index
aims to wipe out litterbugs.” (Straits
Times, May 5, 2008)
The Finance Minister had
called for all town councils to freeze their fees during the recent
Budget debate in Parliament when he announced the extension of a
one-year freeze on fee increases for government-provided services
till the end of 2008.
And indeed, as the Channel
NewsAsia report said, all 14 PAP TCs declared that they will not
increase S&CC for 2008.
However, it seems that PAP
town councils, and Aljunied GRC
TC in particular, are already looking for ways to increase S&C
charges next year – Aljunied TC citing “hardcore litterbugs” in the
“dirtiest precincts” as its reason for doing so.
With inflation hitting
26-year highs, isn’t this proposed increase in fees
for “the dirtiest precincts” a breach of the PAP town councils’
promise to Singaporeans?
Aljunied GRC Town
Council
The fact of the matter is
that Aljunied TC, along with all
PAP-run TCs, have enough funds to address the “hardcore litterbugs”
problem. (Read
here for TOC’s earlier article
on town councils’ funds.)
According to Aljunied Town
Council’s Annual Reports, it had $84 million in its Sinking Fund,
an increase of 5 per cent over it’s $80 million in
2005/2006.
Its accumulated surpluses
as at 31 March 2007 was $5 million.
Its funds invested with
fund managers was $44 million, an increase of about 33 per cent
over the $30 million in 2005/2006.
In an earlier article, TOC
reported:
According
to the Straits Times’ report of March 25, 2006, “The gathering
storm”:
Taking into
account all the grants from the Government, the Aljunied Town
Council, for example, gets $560 per household for the financial
year ending March 2005.
The grants include
funds from the Community Improvement Projects Committee (CIPC),
which is controlled by the Ministry of National
Development.
In contrast,
government grants came up to just $113 per household in Potong
Pasir.
In another report on the
same day, “Hougang’s Low may be ‘heart’ to beat”, the Straits Times
reported:
Government grants
came up to about $111 per household in Hougang in 2004-05. By
contrast, neighbouring Aljunied Town Council, which has access to
funds such as the government-controlled Community Improvement
Projects Committee (CIPC), got $560 per household for the same
period.
One therefore will have to
question why the Aljunied Town Council charges more for S&CC
than Potong Pasir and Hougang, across the board – from 2 rooms to
executive flats – when the Aljunied TC is getting more government
grants than the two opposition wards.
In one instant, a
one-roomer’s S&CC in Aljunied Crescent rose from $3.50 to $18.50
from 1994 to 2005 – an increase of about 428 per
cent.
Raising fees,
penalties, legal cost, jail, lose your home!
Instead of charging more,
how about reducing S & CC for the cleaner precincts
instead?
Instead of using penalties
almost all the time, how about incentives to motivate people, for a
change?
By the way, we understand
that if you couldn’t pay your S & CC, the penalty used to be
just 50 cents or a dollar or so.
Now, we believe it is 2
per cent per month of the amount owed or a fixed penalty of a few
dollars, whichever is the higher.
2 per cent is the highest
charge for all financial transactions allowed in Singapore, and
only credit cards charge such a high rate.
If you can’t pay your S
& CC, you are slapped with penalties. If you still can’t pay,
you get a legal letter for which you have to pay the legal cost. As
it’s a standard letter for which thousands are sent every month,
why charge $20 as the legal fee for such a letter?
If you still can’t pay,
you are charged in court, and slapped with a fine.
Well, here’s the paradox –
if you can’t pay for your S & CC, how can you afford to pay the
fine?
If you can’t pay the fine,
you may end up in jail.
By the way, how many
people in Singapore have been to jail?
The Town Council Act also
empowers the Town Council to sell your HDB flat to recover unpaid S
& CC.
A billion dollars
in funds, yet…
In the spirit of keeping
one’s promise, this new idea to increase S & CC should be
nipped in the bud, before we waste anymore of taxpayers’ money and
time to figure out how to implement it.
Perhaps our MPs may have
rather short memories, as the promise was made just about 2 months
ago.
By the way, with more than
a billion dollars in PAP town councils’ sinking
funds, as well as operating surpluses – does
Aljunied Town Council still need to charge more “to cover the extra
work that goes into maintaining them”, as officials at the TC
claimed?
It is high time that
PAP-run Town Councils stop taking the easy way out.
