Earlier today, Low Thia Khiang, Sylvia Lim and Pritam Singh, all parliamentarians from the Workers’ Party (WP) were found liable for damages in a case that investigated misuse of town council funds.
Between July 2011 and July 2015, the Aljunied Hougang Town Council (AHTC) paid at least S$33.7 million to their town council managing agent FM Solutions & Services (FMSS), which was appointed without tender.
Mr Low was the secretary-general of the WP while Ms Lim had chaired AHTC, and Mr Pritam served as a member of the town council’s committee for tenders and contracts.
High Court Judge Kannan Ramesh today said (October 11) that Mr Low and Ms Lim had breached their fiduciary duties to AHTC and that Mr Pritam breached his duties of skill and care to the town council.
Judge Kannan said, Both had “failed to act in AHTC’s best interests and had acted for extraneous purposes.”
As for Mr Singh, while “it cannot be said that he has breached his fiduciary duties to AHTC”, he had breached his “duties of skill and care”, the judge said.
In a statement following the event on their blog ‘In Good Faith’, Mr Pritam, Ms Lim and Mr Low said:
“The court judgment for the first tranche of our case was released this morning. We are in the midst of reviewing the judgment and will take advice from our lawyers. We will share more details on our next step/s in due course.
On his personal Facebook page, Mr Pritam wrote, “In the meantime, our Town Council work continues in earnest. This afternoon, Faisal and I were involved in a briefing at the AHTC office in Hougang with a team from the Municipal Services Office to discuss the evolution of the OneService app amongst other things, while Mr Low and Mr Png were a few hundred metres away at a meeting at the HDB Hougang branch office discussing the Neighbourhood Renewal Program in Hougang SMC”.
“Thank you to all our friends and supporters for walking with us. We have many more miles to go, together”, he added. /TISG