Daily Lessons from Life 25-26 January 2015 - 29.4% S&CC arrears rate reported due to 'human errors': AHPETC

"29.4% S&CC arrears rate reported due to 'human errors': AHPETC - CNA 26 January 2015

SINGAPORE: The Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC) announced on Monday (Jan 26) that its Service and Conservancy Charges (S&CC) arrears rate for three months and above for residential units is 5.66 per cent as of Sep 30, 2014. This is "drastically" lower than the 29.37 per cent reported in April 2013, it said.

The spike in figures was due to "reporting and human errors", said AHPETC Chairman Sylvia Lim in the press release.

Minister of State for National Development Desmond Lee had previously called the 29.4% arrears rate "shocking". He also highlighted that the town council, run by the opposition Workers' Party, had failed to submit its monthly S&CC arrears report since May 2013.

AHPETC said it needed time to have its data and processes reviewed internally and by consultants, before releasing the information.

AHPETC acknowledges that this manual process is not the most ideal and efficient way of doing aggregated arrears reporting, as the data size is voluminous. The former Hougang Town Council was able to do such manual reporting in the past as the number of households under management then was a fraction of what AHPETC is handling.

Such a process is tedious and subject to reporting and human errors. In the aftermath of the withdrawal of the then-computer system in 2011, that was the only way for AHPETC to comply with the aggregated arrears reporting requirements from MND until AHPETC’s own system could be enhanced. AHPETC was thus submitting arrears reports to HDB late. In addition, on Jun 18, 2013, AHPETC informed HDB that it was still unable to submit the April 2013 arrears report as it was sorting out a bug in its IT programme for generating arrears reports. 

The arrears rate of 29.4 per cent for April 2013 submitted to MND was an instance of reporting and human errors. An additional step of sorting to avoid double-counting of the same household was inadvertently omitted. A comparison of the arrears report submitted for March 2013 and April 2013 would have shown up the error, as the amount of arrears owed for 3 or more months for April 2013 came down by about S$88,000 from March 2013, but the percentage of households in arrears of 3 or more months increased drastically from 7.42 per cent for March 2013 to 29.4 per cent for April 2013.  

Unfortunately everyone did not notice the anomaly in the April 2013 report that was later published in the Town Council Management Report. We acknowledge the oversight, and regret the error in reporting to HDB.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that the accuracy, integrity, monitoring and management of each individual S&CC account are not compromised in any way by the manual statistics reporting process described above at any point in time. 

Moving on to improvements, AHPETC embarked on a roadmap to enhance its aggregated arrears reporting module sometime in November 2014. It has completed and tested a module to aggregate S&CC data for 1 to less than 3 months and for 3 months and above aging. This enhancement will improve productivity in reporting.

AHPETC will strive to make further improvements to better serve its residents. We thank our residents and the public for their patience and understanding in this matter.
Sylvia Lim
Chairman
Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol Eas Town Council"

Enough said. While it is NOT ideal, WP has finally come out and explained the criticism that had been thrown at them.

Opinions will be formed by different readers. At least this 'knot' is resolved and PEOPLE can focus on the main issues of running a Town Council that serve the needs of the residents.