Trapper's Swamp

Mr Lim Beo Thiam provides his own treatment at the hands of his town council as a chilling warning and sharpens the contrast to claims that  no other government takes care of its people quite like this one. I have reproduced the letter in full below.

I am 52 years old, and have been unemployed for the past 18 months. Before that, my earnings were fitful, especially after my business collapsed and I lost part of a leg to diabetes.

So, I fell behind in my service and conservancy (S&C) charges. The first time it happened, my town council, the Jalan Besar Town Council, took me to court.

The result: the arrears of $432 I owed for not paying a year’s worth of S&C charges for my three-room flat ballooned to more than $1,000.

My new debt included court penalties and late payment charges.

When I tried to settle subsequent S&C charges to avoid a fresh spiral of hefty penalties for non-payment, I was rejected. The town council ruled that I had to settle the old debt before I could pay the new charges.

Naturally, this led to more penalties as my fresh S&C arrears spiked. So, I am now some $3,000 in debt to my town council.

I have appealed to my Member of Parliament for help many times but the final reply invariably remained unchanged: pay up.

The spiral of debt a resident accumulates can be daunting because of the unremitting add-ons of penalties by which an unforgiving system of collection turns monthly arrears into substantial debt.

Town councils shouldn’t be surprised if residents like myself, who face tough times, wonder why we aren’t being helped via the excess revenue collected; revenue which is instead ploughed into loss-making investments.

Shouldn’t any excess revenue be refunded to residents via rebates?

If town councils are keen to invest, set up a fund offering soft loans to residents to tide them over tough times and pay service and conservancy charges.

In fact, what’s wrong with providing soft loans for subsidiary concerns of families, like private tuition, renovation or even a family holiday? So what if some of the loans go bad? Better to lose money by lending to residents than to banks whose only motive is profit.

Town councils should focus single-mindedly on helping residents, and not on making profit or squaring the bottom line.

The letter not only highlights the failure of town councils, but also highlights the difference in expectations between residents of an estate and their town councils. Jalan Besar Town Council has decided the S&C charges were important enough to take a 52 year old man to court for them, then use the red tape they spun to inflate the arrears to 694% of the original amount owed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think even loan sharks have more compassion and less bloodthirsty math.

What do the town councils do that mandates the need to invest in risky sinking funds? Why are the profits from these investments not used to help residents? Is helping their residents even a goal of these town councils?

Mr Lim has asked his MP for help, and was rejected. If the MP has no say in the running of the town council, why have elected officials head them? If they do, then why isn't more being done to use the money, harvested from their residents, to help the people who need help? Why not de-couple the politicians from the town councils if they are just figureheads?

The "scorecard" that was implemented for town councils do not answer any of these questions, nor do they make town councils more accountable or transparent to the residents. It is, just like the bureaucracy that dominates the government sector and makes a mockery of our reputation for efficiency, a piece of red tape to make PAP MPs look good in public. It is a PR exercise, nothing more, and it would be foolish to assume it will have any impact on town councils in their current implementation.