\n<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE \u2013 The Housing Board has been found by the Auditor-General\u2019s Office (AGO)<\/span><\/a> to be responsible for a series of missteps, including lapses that saw housing grants given to people who were ineligible for them.<\/p>\n It also potentially overpaid a contractor $9.7 million for patrol and enforcement work that was not done.<\/p>\n Other issues flagged by the AGO in its latest report involved Home Improvement Programme (HIP) contracts, as well as how HDB processed season parking applications and renewals. This included $2.95 million collected where the applicant, or the family member the applicant was supposedly visiting, was dead.<\/p>\n The AGO\u2019s annual report, published on July 15, highlights key lapses by ministries and public agencies. It was submitted to President Tharman Shanmugaratnam on July 2 and presented to Parliament on July 14.<\/p>\n The AGO found issues with how HDB checked applicants\u2019 eligibility for three schemes \u2013 the Married Child Priority Scheme, Proximity Housing Grant and CPF Housing Grant. As a result of these lapses, flats were allocated and grants disbursed to ineligible applicants, the AGO said.<\/p>\n It added: \u201cThis increased the risk of not achieving the intended policy outcome of these schemes, such as for family members to live near one another for mutual support.\u201d<\/p>\n The AGO had looked at 37,737 approved applications for the Married Child Priority Scheme and Proximity Housing Grant scheme. Under the first scheme, married children and their parents get priority access to Build-To-Order flats, while the second scheme gives subsidies to those buying a resale flat to live with or near their parents or children.<\/p>\n The AGO said HDB had been using its internal records on home ownership and occupier information, as well as applicant-declared information, to assess eligibility for these schemes.<\/p>\n But such information might not be up to date as the people involved could have changed their residential addresses without HDB\u2019s knowledge, the AGO noted.<\/p>\n It found that 37 Married Child Priority Scheme applications and 27 Proximity Housing Grant scheme applications, with grants totalling $0.47 million, did not meet this criterion.<\/p>\n Most of this was due to HDB not using accurate addresses when assessing eligibility, the AGO said.<\/p>\n HDB told the AGO that issues with two Proximity Housing Grant scheme applications were attributable to staff oversight, while seven were due to inconsistencies in calculation of distances.<\/p>\n These nine applications have been rectified, it added. The report did not say what was done about the other applications that had not met the criterion.<\/p>\n The AGO added that HDB should have ensured that its internal records were consistent with the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority\u2019s (ICA) records.<\/p>\n In a statement issued on July 15, HDB said it has introduced additional checks on residential addresses against ICA\u2019s records. It has also taken steps to regularise discrepancies, including recovering grants where needed.<\/p>\n \u201cHDB acknowledges the importance of using accurate, up-to-date information on residential addresses to assess eligibility for proximity-based priority schemes and grants,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n The AGO also found that for 1,619 applications, addresses in HDB\u2019s records did not match the relevant addresses in ICA\u2019s records during the minimum occupancy period.<\/p>\n HDB has looked into 92 applications so far. Of these, 10 involved cases where individuals did not stay at or within 4km of the purchased flat during the minimum occupancy period.<\/p>\n In 42 applications, individuals had failed to update their addresses with ICA. For 10 others, individuals had changed their place of residence without HDB\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n For the other 30 applications, HDB\u2019s investigation found that they either had prior approvals from HDB or they fell under special circumstances. In some cases, HDB has recovered the grants with accrued interest.<\/p>\n For Proximity Housing Grant agreements, it will also require individuals to update their NRIC addresses within 28 days of moving into the purchased flat to stay with applicants, or to an address within 4km of the purchased flat.<\/p>\n The AGO found weaknesses in eligibility checks on Tier 1 season parking and family season parking transactions, involving $24.99 million.<\/p>\n To be eligible for Tier 1 season parking, applicants must be the registered owner, authorised occupier or tenant of HDB flats or shops in the HDB precinct served by the carpark.<\/p>\n The AGO found that 12,359 applicants for 1,697 applications and 185,555 renewals, totalling $21.39 million, did not qualify.<\/p>\n Notably, 37,138 transactions were made by applicants who were not owners, occupiers or tenants of any HDB flat or shop, the AGO said.<\/p>\n HDB said renewal of the passes was usually done every month and transacted through online or automatic recurrent payment modes and that \u201cto be resident-centric\u201d, continued eligibility was not verified at renewal as places of residence were usually unchanged.<\/p>\n The AGO\u2019s analysis also found that 30,199 transactions were approved for 2,534 applicants. This was even though the applicant or enabler \u2013 the family member to be visited \u2013 had died between 31 days and 26 years before the date of application or renewal.<\/p>\n \u201cThis put in doubt the identity and eligibility of the applicant and enabler. In our view, it is important for HDB to ascertain their identity so that it can ensure that the eligibility criteria are met,\u201d the AGO said.<\/p>\n It also found that 1,585 commercial vehicles were charged incorrect season parking rates for 10,922 transactions. Instead of commercial rates, they were charged non-commercial ones, resulting in an estimated under-collection of fees of $1 million.<\/p>\n HDB said: \u201cWe will introduce measures such as periodic full checks of other relevant eligibility information and requiring applicants to declare at application that they met the eligibility criteria and reminding them at renewal that they must continue to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n The AGO also found that HDB did not exercise adequate oversight of a contractor it engaged to provide patrol and enforcement services for its carparks.<\/p>\n Based on HDB\u2019s preliminary estimate, it had possibly overpaid the contractor $9.7 million for patrol and enforcement work not performed.<\/p>\n Discrepancies included actual patrol frequency for some carparks being lower than required by HDB, significant differences between rostered and actual carpark patrol records, and concurrent clock-ins by the same patrol personnel at different carpark locations.<\/p>\n HDB said that upon being alerted to the discrepancies, it raised them with the contractor, which conducted its own investigation.<\/p>\n The investigation uncovered access control weaknesses in the contractor\u2019s system for managing the work of patrol personnel, which compromised the integrity of the records.<\/p>\n The contractor has since lodged a police report and as an immediate preventive measure, HDB worked with the contractor to remove system rights to amend carpark data and implemented automated system checks for more rigorous monitoring.<\/p>\n Besides issuing a formal warning letter in March for contractual breaches, HDB also commenced recovery of the administrative charges, which included the full extent of payments made for works not rendered.<\/p>\n \u201cHDB recognises that there were gaps in its processes and has taken steps to address them, including the implementation of automated system checks for more rigorous monitoring, and adopting stronger contractual requirements in the latest contracts,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n The AGO also looked through 44 variation orders totalling $34.8 million for 14 HIP contracts. It found errors in the valuation of 19 such orders, involving seven contracts managed by HDB\u2019s consultants.<\/p>\n The errors were due to the use of incorrect rates in the valuation, such as star rates instead of contract rates, and resulted in a total underpayment of $1.02 million for five contracts and overpayment of $250,000 for four others.<\/p>\n The AGO said there was inadequate assurance that HDB had exercised sufficient oversight in the valuation of variation works by its consultants.<\/p>\n HDB told the AGO that it would reassess and adjust the valuation of the affected orders by June, and downgraded the performance ratings of the consultants involved.<\/p>\n In addition, HDB will implement measures such as conducting a review of its item descriptions for contract rates to ensure clarity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 The Housing Board has been found by the Auditor-General\u2019s Office (AGO) to be responsible for a series of missteps, including lapses that saw…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Weaknesses in processing of season parking applications and renewals<\/h2>\n
Possible $9.7m in overpayment to contractor for patrol and enforcement services<\/h2>\n
Errors in orders for Home Improvement Programme (HIP) contracts<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>
\n