I hate to account to anyone. Seriously I hate to report to my mom, dad, girlfriend on what I am doing. I may do it out of concern or love, but don't make me do it like I have to. But...it is a totally different matter when I have to report to my bosses. Why? Cos they put food on the table and pay my bills and shoes I wear. I get paid, that's why.
I pay my town councils or management to take care of my place every month, it was rather shocking when I read in the papers that my town council has lost money on minibonds. But when you have Town Councils imposing fines on those needy people who make late payments on conservancy charges at
2%; and they have excess of
S$1 billion dollars (16 town councils managing more that S$2 billion in sinking funds) to have investments in stocks and minibonds/notes- This is getting ridiculous.
I thought we just have 10k odd unfortunate people losing money. Now doing some simple maths I realised a lot more people have lost, given the fact that those millions in our town councils treasure chests do belong to us.
Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council has about 85438 HDB households covering Pasir Ris and Punggol 21; Sengkang's Compassvale & Rivervale precincts; and some estates in Hougang. Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council has about 31921 HDB households covering Buona Vista, Bukit Timah, Cashew, Ulu Pandan and Zhenghua. (These information are
found online, just need to know where to find but I am not 100% sure if its accurate, so don't quote me).
Our government charges a wide varied of S&CC to the different households. I will simplify the calculations and take each household as an entity instead of segregating into 1-room, 2-room, executive etc. Pasir Ris-Punggol TC lost about S$4mil of the ~S$154 mil it holds; per household lost S$46 in the minibonds/notes saga.
For Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council, they are listed on Creative Technology as one of the majority shareholders with 530,000 shares currently valued at about S$1,245,500 based on today's share price of $2.35. I understand they were bought back in many years and back then the value was hovering around $25-15 a share? Now at under $3, I guess long-term investment is the way to go (~$7million poof)..wonder who will ever be able to see returns on that, maybe my great-great-grand kids(Will Mr Sim Wong Hoo be still alive?). For more on that please check out
this Mr Biao site.
While Holland-Bukit Panjang TC (manages ~S$120 mil) lost about S$8 mil in the minibonds/notes saga and minimum of S$7 mil based on recent pricing of Creative shares and estimated lowest buy price. So per household in Holland-Bukit Panjang GRC lost about S$470!
Seriously, I don't see condominium management committee making such decisions. And the lucky fact is opposition town councils are making 6% returns annually (I beg to differ how the media would react if they lost $$). To think we pay our PAPPY gahmen million-dollar salaries. I say Mr Low Thia Kiang should run the CPF board, town coucils, oh hell maybe even GIC/Temasek!! - given the racking losses observed on the papers recently. I fear to see many more life savings evaporated in their treasure chest. I guess we postponed many many years of calls to distribute these hard-earned citizens money during bad times, only to find them funding lost causes/long-term investments.
Would accountability be able to solve this issue of taking citizens' money to do investments when the finances were meant for washing, painting, general works and upgrading, etc? Why wasn't the coffers used to stop payments for the needy or reduction in conservancy charges for all? Seriously...when will the mad obsession to have huge treasure chests of money by government agencies stop? Our opposition wards have very little budget/sinking fund to work with, and they have been prudent in their spending, likewise in the last oil spike scenario, where people stop buying huge tanks to drive to work - do we need a wake up call before we can reduce unnecessary wastage and lack of accountability and imprudent investments? Those individuals who have lost investments were made a mockery by the PAPpy gahmen. How about these supposedly savvy government servants who are taking citizens' monthly charges into high-risked investments? Someone has to pay or answer for this. I just hope it's not me.
Entering into another subject, would a recent talk about 2-political party system be able to stave off this debacle?
