SINGAPORE – Claims that civil servants and their families disproportionately purchased property near planned but unannounced train stations are up for discussion in Parliament when the House meets on Oct 6.
Nine MPs have raised questions to the Government on the claims, which emerged from a paper published by American non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research in September, according to the order paper released on Oct 5.
Alex Yam (Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC) has asked Prime Minister Lawrence Wong whether the public service has reviewed the findings and whether the Government will independently examine or validate them and what actions will be taken in response.
He has also asked what safeguards are currently in place to prevent and detect public officers from using non-public government information for private financial gain.
Nominated MP Azhar Othman has asked whether there is a regulatory framework to ensure that such actions are curbed and Worker’s Party MP Gerald Giam (Aljunied GRC) has asked if such actions constitute a breach of statutory duties or civil service rules.
The Government is already reviewing home purchases made between 2007 and 2011 by officers involved in rail planning at the time, in cases where the properties were close to sites subsequently announced as MRT stations.
The Public Service Division said in a statement on Sept 25 that it is identifying the purchases and will review them to assess if there was actual misconduct. If there is evidence that an officer used non-public information to make a property purchase for personal benefit, the case will be referred to the police for further investigation, it added.
The paper said it found clear evidence of “informed trading” by civil servants, citing findings that purchase intensity near planned MRT stations was higher for civil servants compared with a control group of non-civil servants with similar demographic attributes and housing consumption behaviours.
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