Grant eligibility had been determined and obligations were made located in part on declarations made by grant applicants and training providers, an SSG spokesperson said.
Some of these declarations were wrong or incorrect, and not all had been picked up by internal checks, said the particular spokesperson.
“Other errors also happened during manual processing of grants, including those made by SSG’s service provider. ”
SSG said it offers taken “immediate further action” and all cases highlighted by the BACK have been followed up on. For 93 per cent of the overpaid amount identified by BACK, SSG has provided to the affected instruction providers, companies plus individuals, to initiate reconciliation and recovery.
“Pending internal checks, we will get in touch with the rest of the entities right at the end of this month. Many entities will be provided enough time to check their own records and come back any confirmed over-payment, ” said SSG.
The agency said it will also take more preventive steps to avoid future lapses.
Its brand new Training Grants Program makes better use of government data, rather than declarations to determine give eligibility, it stated, adding that it will certainly automate more manual processes.
It will also streamline business guidelines to rely less on conditions and criteria that need declarations and manual processing.
The spokesperson said that SSG has also strengthened the disbursement processes plus controls.
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT LEVY
AGO also observed “laxity” in SSG’s enforcement of exceptional Skills Development Levy (SDL) collections as well as the estimated outstanding levies owed from 2015 to 2020 has been S$43 million, as of April this year.
All employers have to pay the garnishment every month for their nearby and foreign workers working in Singapore, and the funds are channelled to the Skills Advancement Fund to support labor force upgrading programmes.
The total amount of SDL collected from 2015 to 2020 had been S$1. 51 billion dollars.
“SSG had been tardy in its observance actions and did not put in adequate effort to conduct audits of employers which potentially owed quite a lot of SDL, ” the spokesperson said.
When employers usually do not pay the levies, SSG sends mailers to remind them and conducts audits, depending on the estimated exceptional amounts.
BACK noted that the sending of mailers had not been effective in gathering the levies due.
For employers which had an excellent levy above a certain amount and did not react to the mailers, SSG was supposed to send them reminder words and calls.
But AGO found that there were “long gaps”, as long as 17 months, between mailers, reminder letters and follow-up calls when each action must have been taken in 35 days, based on SSG’s standard operating treatment.
SSG did not put in adequate energy to conduct audits of employers which potentially owed significant amounts of levy, AGO stated.
SSG has been supposed to select brand new audit cases on the weekly basis. Yet from November 2016 to March 2020, a period of about four years, it just selected five employers for audit.
According to SSG, it was because it wanted to concentrate on completing its audit backlog of 55 employers.
By January this year, SSG had completed the particular audit of 37 of the 60 employers and collected a total of S$1. eleven million. The remaining companies were eventually not audited due to various reasons such as becoming deregistered or getting insolvent.
AGO also noted that SSG did not consist of public sector companies in its enforcement activities, a legacy through when it was below then Singapore Labor force Development Agency.
But AGO found that as of April 2022, the total excellent levy for open public sector employers for that period 2015 in order to 2020 was approximated at S$3 mil.
SSG offers since informed BACK that it now audits public sector companies and has tightened enforcement on them. The SSG spokesperson said on Wednesday that all general public sector agencies have paid in full their estimated underpayments.
The variance between estimated SDL payable and the actual obligations has fallen from 18 per cent associated with levy collected within 2008, to the current 3 to 4 per cent, said SSG.
“However, SSG acknowledges that a more efficient system is needed to follow up on variances in between our estimates associated with SDL due, and exactly what companies actually spend, and more needs to be performed to reconcile the remaining gap, ” this said.
“We have taken immediate action to address the existing variances in our estimates associated with SDL due, and exactly what companies had in fact paid. ”
It added the variances may not almost all be due to real underpayments by companies. They may also be because of employers using an updated set of employee data at the point associated with SDL payment.
“SSG has initiated the reconciliation procedure with the affected companies, ” it stated.
It pointed out improvements in its procedures including more well-timed payment reminders to employers, and more important punitive action upon “the few recalcitrant employers who usually do not pay the outstanding levies”.