18 town councils get $1.8m one-off grant adjustment due to discrepancy

Eighteen town councils will receive a total of $1.8 million to their service and conservancy charges (S&CC) operating grant due to a discrepancy in the distribution of grants over a 14-year period, the Ministry of National Development (MND) said on Monday (Dec 29). 

The amounts awarded to each town council range from $22,000 to $383,000, and will be disbursed by Jan 31 next year. 

This one-off adjustment arose from a discrepancy in each year's disbursement computation from financial year 2011 to 2024, which led to a shortfall in the amount of grants distributed to the affected town councils over that period. 

The shortfall was discovered by the Housing and Development Board during an internal review of the grant computation process, said MND. 

The grant amount for each financial year is calculated using household data before the start of the year. It is then adjusted to account for changes in the number of households during the year. 

"However, due to a system error from FY2011 to FY2024, a small number of HDB flats handed over to town councils in the month of March of the affected years were omitted from the computation," said MND. 

The ministry added that the discrepancy in a particular year is not carried over to the following year as the omitted flats are subsequently accounted for when the grant is next calculated. 

The shortfall constitutes about 0.09 per cent of the grants disbursed to the town councils over the 14-year period, according to MND. 

The ministry currently disburses over $280 million every year to support town councils' operations such as managing and maintaining the common areas in HDB estates. 

"The discrepancy has since been rectified," said MND. "To prevent recurrence, HDB has implemented more robust system checks, as well as validation and reconciliation controls as part of the grant computation process." 

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chingshijie@asiaone.com