Out of the box Oversight of condo manager
You can recall that the general manager of Ang Mo Kio Town Council was found to be corrupt in favoring certain contractors in return for entertainment and other benefits. 

How can the town council, which include prominent MPs and the PM, have avoided this risk and taken steps to ensure the integrity of the quotation process?

What has happened in the AMK town council could have happened to other town councils and to the councils of many MCST (i.e. condominiums) in Singapore.

I am the chairman of the council of a MCST. The condo manager invites several contractors to quote for maintenance and repair work and services. He summarizes the quotations and presents a recommendation for the council to approve.

It is not practical for us to manage a quotation box to be opened by the condo manager and a council member. How can the council ensure that the integrity of the quotation process and ensure that there is no collusion between the condo manager and his preferred contractors?

With the agreement of the office bearers, I have decided to adopt this approach:

a) I have created a special email account for the MCST. It is accessed by the office bearers.

b) I have instructed the condo manager that all requests for quotations should be sent by e-mail to the selected contractors and the emails should be copied to this special email account.

c) The contractors are also instructed to send their quotations to the special email account. This allows the office bearers to monitor the quotations independently of the condo manager.

d) On the closing date, the office bearer will forward the quotations to the condo manager. This is similar to the manual process of opening the physical quotation box.

e) This process ensure that the quotation process is transparent and that the condo manager does not have the chance of influencing the quotations submitted by the contractors.

Do you like this approach? Should it be adopted as a standard best practice?

Tan Kin Lian
 

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