LESSONS FROM BURJ DUBAI

The world’s tallest building in Dubai, at 160 storeys, was finally completed recently, after five years at the astronomical cost of US$1.5 billion. But no sooner than it was completed, it was renamed Burj Khalifa after the ruler of Abu Dhabi for obvious reasons. The Abu Dhabi King is also the black knight who rescued Dubai from the brink of bankruptcy as a result of her years of lavish and exuberant spending.

I was wondering whether our Town Council could suffer the same fate if we throw caution to the winds by being lavish in our spending. What lesson can we draw from here?

As a custodian of public money, it is good to remind ourselves to be prudent ; to get the best value for our hard earned money while we strive to maintain our S/CC charges for as low as and as long as possible !

Yet it is so easy to be frivolous in our spending especially in the light of our rising expectations. To cite but a few examples of our potential pitfalls that could easily lead us down the slippery road to financial ruin :

* Provide CCTV to all common areas, including lifts, staircases, corridors, void decks etc, to monitor all kinds of nuisances than we can afford.

* Have more luxuriant and extensive landscape sites in our estates in spite of our tropical weather that renders our maintenance more onerous.

* Have fanciful lights which are expensive, difficult to maintain and consume high energy.

* Construct fountain or water features which can lead to high maintenance costs.

Well, the hard truth is, there is a price to everything. Certainly our wants are many, but our means are also limited. So it is often a choice between alternatives as we take a balanced approach, guided albeit by the timeless truth that there is always a trade off in everything. Sometimes, the trade-off is painful and unpopular. But hard decisions we have to make, for to do otherwise is to abdicate our responsibility to our residents.

Put it another way, it is alright to dream big, but as long as we keep our feet on the ground, with the Burj Dubai as poignant reminder of our excesses, our Town Council should do well in many more years to come.

Review of Financial Year 2008/2009

Sembawang Town Council has just released its Annual Report and the audited financial statements for the FY 2008/09. It was an eventful year.

We not only witnessed the completion of various upgrading and improvement projects targeted at improving the living environment for our residents, but also launched initiatives aimed at addressing the sustainable maintenance of our Town in the long term.



Improving on our service to residents has always been the key priority of our Town Council. Towards this end we have for instance, set up our Call Centre and streamlined our processes to offer our residents a simple and no-fuss way to channel feedback for more expeditious action.

In FY2008/09, we witnessed the global financial crisis which resulted in one of the world’s worst economic recession. Many countries and institutions were affected and our Town Council was not immune to the negative effect of the financial crisis.

In its wake, many people ask whether Town Councils should simply place all their sinking funds in fixed deposits, rather than investing part of the funds in bonds or other financial instruments.

Personally, I think we should take a total approach in safeguarding our Town Council’s funds. Take Sembawang Town Council as an example. With a prudent and balanced approach, we had made a total return of S$61 million from the investment of our funds in the past 6 ½ years from FY2003/04 to 30 September 2009, despite the financial crisis experienced in FY2008/09. This is a return of 4.3% per annum.

If, on the other hand, our Town Council were to place all our funds in fixed deposits, we would have made only S$13 million over the same period, based on the average fixed deposit of 0.9% per annum over the same period.

This is a difference of S$48 million, which is equivalent to 67% of our one year’s total collection of $72 million from service and conservancy charges (s&cc). Put it in another way, if we were to match this return of S$48 million (form our investments), Town Council would need to increase our s&cc rates by an average of 10% over the period starting from FY2003/04. But thanks to our prudent and balanced approach, we are able to keep our s&cc rates at an affordable level while ensuring that long term and expensive cyclical works, such as replacement of lifts and water supply systems, repainting, re-roofing and electrical rewiring works, can be carried out smoothly.

In a nutshell, we need to take a total and long term approach to safeguard our Town Council’s funds for the benefit of our residents.

IN PRAISE OF OUR CLEANERS

Some people say, not without justification, that Singapore is “a cleaners’ city” rather than a clean city.

While there is some truth in either view, the season of “Clean and Green Singapore” is with us again. And it is time to take stock of what we have done, or not done enough, to make our country Clean and Green.

Let’s start the season by paying tribute to our cleaners who have toiled quietly often behind the scenes, to keep our estates clean while we are busy at work or at play.

Like many of us in our occupation for a living, our cleaners too, are not spared from the occasional brickbats from some of our residents who demanded no less, even from their menial work.

And why not, as our government strives to improve our cleaning industry standards by increasing the local labour content through compulsory training, better wages and regular recognition of our cleaners at large.

Says one of our winners for this year “Best Cleaner Award”, Mr Goh Leong Sing, who have been with the Sembawang Town Council (Marsiling Estate) since 2006:


Mr Goh Leong Sing receiving his winning prize from Mr Hawazi Daipi. Looking on is Mr Soon Min Sin, GM of Sembawang Town Council


“Ours is daily hardwork to keep up with daily demands which include compulsory training to make us even better at our work. But I am grateful for the training and better wages, including the award or recognition. I guess I have to work even harder to maintain the trust of my supervisor and Marsiling residents alike.”

Who says paying tribute is only a one-way street?