MND Report Says Town Councils Performed Well in FY2019; Tampines Town Council Rated as Worst Performer

If you’re a homeowner, do you remember not paying your town council conservancy fees for two months, then getting slapped with a promise for legal action?

Turns out, the town councils aren’t being heartless; they have a reason for chasing after payments too.

MND Report Says Town Councils Performed Well in FY2019

The Ministry of National Development (MND) has released the report card for the town councils’ performance in 2019 yesterday.

The Town Council Management Report (TCMR) grades the town councils in the following five areas:

• Estate Cleanliness
• Lift Performance
• Estate Maintenance
• Corporate Governance
• S&CC Arrears Management (i.e. whether conservancy fees are paid on time)

Based on data submitted by the town councils and their auditors, the town councils are rated green, amber, or red, with green being the best.

Overall, the town councils did pretty well, with most of them scoring green in all areas.

There are, however, three exceptions:

• Tampines Town Council
• Aljunied-Hougang Town Council
• Choa Chu Kang Town Council

Tampines Town Council Rated as Worst Performer

From the three town councils with amber ratings, Tampines scored the worse, with it not doing as well in Estate Maintenance and Corporate Governance.

The Tampines Town Council was marked down in the Corporate Governance area after it breached the Town Council Financial Rules.

The council had reportedly transferred an insufficient amount of funds into sinking and lift replacement fund for one quarter of the year.

Apparently, the mistake was caused by a computation error and it was rectified in the next quarter.

For Estate Maintenance, the obstruction of common areas pulled their grade down massively.

Similarly, Aljunied-Hougang Town Council was marked down for Estate Maintenance, with obstruction of common areas as the main problem.

The town council issued a statement saying they’ll work harder to educate and work with residents and agencies.

Meanwhile, Choa Chu Kang Town Council was penalised in the S&CC Arrears Management category.

Apparently, about 40 to 50% of its monthly S&CC due for collection had been overdue.

In response, the town council pointed out that there were more than one thousand built-to-order (BTO) flats from Apr 2018 to Mar 2020.

However, flat owners were delayed from moving in due to renovation delays and COVID-19.

Since homeowners typically start paying S&CC charges only after they move in, the town council ended up with arrears.

It was added that the town council has minimised the collection of overdue charges during the pandemic.

Changes to TCMR

If this is the first time you’re hearing about the TCMR, don’t bother memorising it because it’s going to be different next year.

The report will be split into two: one on corporate governance and one on operational indicators (meaning the rest of the factors without corporate governance).

The operational indicators’ report will be published every year in May or June while the corporate governance report will be published at the end of the year in November and December.

The reason for that is because financial documents are only submitted to MND by the end of September.

No TCMR 2020

On a separate note, there will be no TCMR published for FY2020.

That’s because the assessment of town councils has been suspended from Apr 2020 to this month.

That doesn’t mean there are no checks available.

Town councils will have to submit a self-declared corporate governance checklist, along with their audited financial statement for the year.

The checklists will be posted onto the website, MND says.

Feature Image: The Light Lab / Shutterstock.com