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GE2015: WP: AHPETC and FMSS go to mediation in Oct

WP unveils last batch of candidates

The reported dispute between the Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol-East Town Council (AHPETC) and its former managing agent, FM Solutions and Services (FMSS), has gone to mediation and will be heard in October, Workers' Party chairman Sylvia Lim said on Monday (31 Aug).

Speaking at the party's Syed Alwi Road headquarters, Lim said the issue was “old news”, related to claims filed by FMSS when its contract with the town council expired.

She added the town council had made further payments to FMSS for some of those claims, but had disputed others, and both parties were agreeable to mediation.

The New Paper reported on Monday that FMSS had sent a legal letter of demand to AHPETC over fees owed.

Lim declined to give details on the figures involved as mediation was a “private process”. She said the figures would not impact AHPETC's annual report for financial year 2014/15, which Hougang MP Png Eng Huat said a day earlier that it showed the town council to be in a surplus.

Sylvia Lim and Png Eng Huat at the WP news conference
Sylvia Lim and Png Eng Huat at the WP news conference

Most of the claims, Lim said, were for the following financial year. She added if the dispute were not resolved through mediation, the managing agreement between AHPETC and FMSS allowed for the matter to go to arbitration.

When asked if the disputed figures were related to the Ministry of National Development's statement of FMSS “grossly profiteering” off the town council, Lim said it should be the MND to clarify what the ministry meant by an “acceptable level of profit', as it had first used the term.

She also called on the ministry to reveal the profits of managing agents of the PAP-run Town Councils.

“This is just a statement from them (MND), and I don't think it is for us to explain what they mean,” she said.

Lim also briefly addressed revelations that potential candidate Gurmit Singh had initially withdrawn from the WP and joined the Singaporeans First Party, calling it a “special circumstance” that the party had never encountered before.

Together with Png, Lim introduced the last batch of potential candidates for the upcoming election.

The three are: Frieda Chan, 39, a social worker who contested in the last election for WP in the now-disbanded Moulmein-Kallang GRC; Leon Perera, 44, the chief executive of a business research and consulting agency who has also worked in the Economic Development Board; and Bernard Chen, 29, the WP's youngest candidate and a project executive at a charity foundation.

Perera said if elected, he and the other WP candidates would learn from the experience in Aljunied, with regard to the handover of documentation from the relevant parties, and also work to improve workflow and processes.

They join 16 other potential candidates already unveiled by the WP, together with the seven incumbent MPs and two Non-constituency Members of Parliament, who will be contesting in the 11 September general election. - with additional reporting by Nicholas Yong