Auditor General’s Report - Millions Missing

TOC

The original Auditor General Office’s (AGO) audit of 12 Ministries and associated statutory boards has revealed irregularities to an extent not fully revealed by the recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

According to the AGO, losses of public monies added up to $6.2 million, a substantial amount of which is still unaccounted for.

The Auditor General’s preface to the report states that ‘This audit approach is not intended to reveal all errors and irregularities.’

In the report, the Ministry of Law lost a potential $77,666.64 safety deposit because its computer system could only register sums to the nearest dollar. It appears under the header ‘No $77,666.64 security deposit because of 36 cents’.

The report details how these millions were lost in a detailed account of mistakes and dubious practices.

The Ministry of Home Affairs, for example, charged rental far below the market rate, forgoing $2.38 million that should have gone into state coffers. The Ministry of Law, in addition to the 36 cent mistake, left our public funds $386,829 poorer by failing to implement rental increase. This was described as an ‘oversight’.

The list goes on.

The Ministry of Manpower delayed collecting a $501,998 debt for a grand total of 15 years. When it decided to finally recover the sum of money, the company disputed the debt owed but the Ministry did not have the necessary paperwork to ‘substantiate the debt’. National Development lost us $228,000 in foregone rental, and Trade and Industry overpaid $1.87m in grants to a statutory board (since recovered).

The largest outstanding sum identified was the Ministry of Health: $136.2 million for Phase III of the National University Hospital development project has still not been recovered despite having been completed in 1996.

More questions than answers

The report raises more questions than it answers. Procurement irregularities are unexplained: a National Development contract was awarded for an eighth ranking bid (in terms of price) out of 11 without any justification. Further, the officers signing the contracts were not authorized to do so. Under the column ‘subsequent action’, all that is said is that the Ministry ‘streamlined procurement procedures…which would prevent such lapses from recurring’. Not even an ex post facto explanation about the dubious procurement.

The ‘subsequent action’ detailed for other irregularities and mistakes do not offer much elaboration. In the case of the Ministry of Manpower’s half a million dollar mistake that spanned 15 years, it gave assurances that ‘levy debts will be resolved within a much shorter time frame in future’ and that ‘future relevant documents’ would be retained.

TOC Opinion

Theonlinecitizen (TOC) recently reproduced in full the report by the Public Accounts Committee (here), convened by Parliament to scrutinize irregularities highlighted by the Auditor General’s report for financial year 05-06. It gave few concrete figures to highlight the irregularities it was pointing out.

TOC has obtained a copy of the original AGO report, which gives a far more comprehensive overview of the scope of the irregularities. This is reproduced in full (see below). We hope that members of the public will step forward to scrutinize the report and ask the necessary questions of our public servants.

In light of the limited scope of the Auditor-General’s report, we believe that the public deserves a more thorough audit of its public offices. Further, action needs to be taken to examine why these mistakes occurred in the first place: What are the fundamental causes of these lapses? Is it systemic or is it just incompetence on the part of the departments involved?

What were the consequences of these multi-million dollar mistakes?

This report can either be swept under the carpet to the further detriment of the credibility of the media and our government, or it can serve as a reference point for a new era in government transparency and accountability.

We hope the latter will prevail.

I'm just too tire to make comments.

Bra-stripping fine for Singapore radio broadcaster

SINGAPORE (AP) - A Singapore radio show is being taken to task for holding a contest in which female studio guests were asked to remove their bras from under their clothes and pose for a video webcast.

Singapore media regulators say the competition was exploitative and inappropriate. They are fining MediaCorp Radio the equivalent of about $10,000 for contravening Singapore's broadcast code.

Regulators say the March talk-show segment challenged a group of women to take their bras off in the shortest possible time.

Singapore, known for its tight restrictions on media and political speech, has relaxed censorship regulations for some films and plays in recent years.

Women on the talk show were asked to hold their bras up and pose for a video camera recording the event to be posted on the broadcaster's website and video-sharing site YouTube.

Regulators said the radio show hosts made sexually suggestive remarks about "how fast the bras were removed, as well as the colour, design and cup size of the bras, and the size of the girls' breasts."

A government statement said such contests have a negative influence on young, impressionable listeners and suggested that DJs show more restraint.

"As celebrity figures and role models, DJs wield influence over young listeners, and hence, should conduct themselves in a socially responsible manner," the statement said.

This story has me googling "Singapore Bra Stripping". Cool.

Seriously, what's wrong with taking off your bra and talking about sex? What "negative influence"? What "young, impressionable listeners"?

Everyone thinks about sex, what's wrong with talking about it? This country is way too up-tight. Everyone should masturbate more and loosen up.

Big things

You know, everyone is like: "I want to do this shit, I want to do that shit." And all the shit are important shit. You know, shit like saving the world shit, making money shit, famous shit, hero shit, educate the world shit, invention shit, you know, big shit. What about the small shit? Huh?
What if all the big shit in the fucking world is make up of small shit? Who's gona do all the small shit?
Have you heard anyone saying: "I wan be a taxi driver." No, dude. You only hear people say they want to be a chief Justice or a minister or shit like that. What's the fuck with all that?
Maybe that's what wrong with the world, everyone wanting to do big things and people doing the small things are so fucking piss with what they are doing that they do a fuck up job.
Hey, fuck. What if all the big things are make of small things and all the big important things are like fuck because all the small things are like fuck.
Maybe there are no big things. People just like to live with the delusion that they could do something important. Well, either all things are important or none of them are.
Fuck. Look at your life. Look at your fucking life. What makes you think you are all that important or better than anyone else?

New Tag

Decide to add a "General Nosense" tag, because, let's face it most of it IS.

Results for 2nd semester

English For Academic Purposes (Arts) B
Introduction to Economic Analysis B
Founders of Modern Philosophy B+
Metaphysics C
Philosophy and Film B+
Singapore Society B-

Cap: 3.4

Sucks! Meta-my-ass!

Friedrich Nietzsche - quotes

The greatest weight.—

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you:

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!" If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you; the question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more, and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
--

A traveler, who had visited many lands and peoples and seen several of the earth's continents, was asked what quality in men he had found everywhere. He said: they tend to be lazy.
To others, it seems that he should have said, more rightly and significantly: they are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions. At bottom every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that no outlandish coincidence will shake together, a second time, such a marvelously variegated multiplicity into unity as he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience—why?
For fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Shamefacedness, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For most it is idleness, inertia, in short that tendency to laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than fearful, and fear most of all the burdensome nuisance of absolute honesty and nakedness.
Artists alone hate this lazy procession in borrowed manners and left-over opinions and they reveal everyone's secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare to show us man as he is, unique even unto each move of his muscles; even more, that by strictly in consequence of this uniqueness, he is beautiful and worth regarding, new and incredible, as every work of nature, and never boring. When the great thinker despises human beings, he despises their laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like factory goods, indifferent, unworthy to be associated with or instructed.
Human beings who do not want to belong to the mass need only to stop being comfortable; follow their conscience, which cries out: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, and desiring, that isn't you at all."
Every youthful soul hears this call day and night and trembles at it; for it has a premonition of its eternally fated lot of happiness, when it contemplates its true liberation: a happiness it can never attain to, so long as it lies in chains of fear and convention. And how desolate and senseless life can be without this liberation! There is no more unpleasant and adverse a creature in this world than the man who has evaded his genius and who now looks peers left and right, squinting behind him and all about. In the end, one cannot come to grips with such a man, since he is all exterior without a core; befallen, bedaubed, baggy robes, a trimmed ghost that cannot provoke even fear and certainly not pity.
--

The madman.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried. "I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?—Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives,—who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed,—and whoever is born after us, for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto!"
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners: they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves!"— It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo . Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

Why we have tummies.

Taken at NUS YIH canteen.
Honey and Cinnamon sugar and butter? What is this? Sugar bomb? Honey not sweet enough for you? You need sugar with that?

Butter with pork floss and condensed milk? This is either so right, or so wrong.

A sign!

I finished my exams, and I went on a walk-about. All sort of adventures and interesting things including trespassing onto Malaysian land(come to think of it, it's kind of suspicious). Anyway, this sign which I saw. 2 sentences which by themselves are meaningful and usual. It's just kindof strange when they are put together.

If it's monitored by cameras, why do you need us to call the police if there is anything suspicious?
And we should call the police in cases of suspicious activities because the place is important enought to be monitored by security cameras which are nevertheless prone to failure during periods of suspicious activities and must rely on civil minded citizens who happens to walk past to call the police.