The first is that Minister mentioned that I exercised my right as Chairman of the Town Council to waive a tender for the MA contract when it was first awarded after the General Election. And, of course, as he knows, under the rules, there is a provision to do so provided that you satisfy the conditions for the waiver. At that time, the reasons were recorded accordingly as in there was urgency in the public interest and, in large part, due to the termination clause present for the TCMS to be cut off. So we needed to actually put in place an MA to handle the handover and time was running against us. Now, the second point he mentioned was about the open tender that was called one year later. That is a fact. It is true, of course, that there were three companies that picked up the documents at that time and only FMSS tendered. Now, we realise our duties when dealing with a sole tenderer that we need to ensure value for money for our residents. So, in actual fact, we went through some due diligence and actually commissioned a special audit of that tender award. So we have gone through a special audit in the case of awarding the tender to our MA in 2012. The auditors have in the main said that the tender was in compliance and we did take our due diligence to ensure value for money for our residents. [. . .] Now I would like to set certain facts straight. Of course, it is true that FMSS was set up after the May 2011 General Election. The landscape of that was this: one is that we all know that there are only certain companies in the market that do town management for HDB estates. I can name them as a fact: Esmaco, EM Services, CPG. We knew at that point in time that all these companies have contracts with PAP Town Councils. In fact, the incumbent MA of Aljunied requested to be released because they thought that it would be detrimental to their business interest because they were doing work for PAP Town Councils and they felt that they could not carry on working for both Town Councils. So it is with that landscape that we had to make a certain decision to find an MA willing to work with us in the Town Council. The set-up of FMSS was because of this very real possibility that we will be faced with nobody else to do it for us. And we stand by that to say that we acted in our residents’ interest to ensure continuity because of this landscape. I am not sure why the Members in the House are laughing because I think, perhaps, they have not been in this position as we have but these are the facts. Now, the next clarification which I should repeat is that FMSS shareholders and directors are not WP members at all. So it is very different from AIM. - Sylvia Lim, 13 May 2014
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 01:25:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015