Town councils to receive grant adjustment of S$1.8 million from MND due to discrepancy
The sum will be distributed among 18 town councils to make up for a discrepancy that affected Service and Conservancy Charges Operating Grant disbursements over a 14-year period.
Housing and Development Board flats in Toa Payoh. (Photo: iStock)
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SINGAPORE: A one-time grant adjustment of S$1.8 million (US$1.4 million) will be distributed among 18 town councils to make up for a discrepancy that affected grant disbursements over a 14-year period.
The adjustment will be made to the Service and Conservancy Charges (S&CC) Operating Grant, the Ministry of National Development (MND) said in a media release on Monday (Dec 29).
The amounts the town councils will receive range from S$22,000 to S$383,000.
The adjustment arose from a discrepancy in the grant disbursement calculations for the 2011 to 2024 financial years, leading to a shortfall in the amounts distributed to the affected town councils.
The shortfall was discovered by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) during an internal review of the grant computation process.
For each financial year, the grant amount is calculated based on household data before its start. The grant amount for each disbursement is then adjusted to reflect changes in the number of households from the previous year.
However, due to a system error from FY2011 to FY2024, a small number of HDB flats handed over to town councils in March of the affected years were omitted from the computation. The discrepancy for a particular year was not carried over to the following year, as the omitted flats were accounted for during the next grant computation.
The deficit represents 0.09 per cent of the S&CC grant sum that was disbursed by MND over the 14 years and would have had minimal impact on their operations, MND said.
MND disburses over S$280 million annually in grants to support town councils' operations, which include the management and maintenance of the common areas in HDB housing estates.
MND said that the discrepancy has since been rectified.
"To prevent recurrence, HDB has implemented more robust system checks, as well as validation and reconciliation controls as part of the grant computation process," the ministry added.
MND and HDB will complete the disbursement of the underpayments to the affected town councils with interest by Jan 31 next year.
