Omission in covering GeBIZ info on Founders’ Memorial cost comes to fore as ELD tender is reported

SINGAPORE: On June 21, the Elections Department (ELD) called for quotations for the supply and delivery of 10 mobile workstations in preparation for the General Election. Though no date has been announced for the next GE, they must be held before November 23, 2025, although there has been speculation that they will be called for as early as September of this year.

The ELD posted the tender on the Government Electronic Business (GeBIZ) portal, with 1:00 pm on July 5 given as the deadline. GeBIZ is the government’s central platform for e-procurement, where all invitations for quotations and tenders are posted.

The Straits Times published an article about the tender for the mobile workstations on Saturday (June 22), including the details of their technical specifications.

Over on Reddit, some users on the platform are wondering why ST looked into the bids on GeBIZ for information regarding the tender for the mobile workstations but did not do so for official records on the cost of the Founders’ Memorial.

The memorial, which began construction earlier this month, is scheduled to open in 2028. According to publicly available data from the Building Construction Authority’s online database for March 2024, the memorial will cost $235,660,000 to construct, which many in Singapore learned about through a post on Reddit.

Read also: S$1M for each SG baby born next year is better than spending S$200M on Founders Memorial, Singaporean suggests

The ELD’s tender for the mobile workstations was also the subject of a Reddit post from June 21, which featured a screenshot of the invitation to bid.

This appeared to lead one Reddit user to comment, “makes you wonder why ST chose to republish this Reddit post but not the previous one.”

Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Founders’ Memorial Singapore at Bay East Garden on June 5, writing in a Facebook post that he was delighted to do so.

He wrote that the memorial would tell “our Singapore Story” and honour the country’s founders, including his father, Lee Kuan Yew, who had served as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1990, “as well as other important leaders in the public, private and people sectors in our first two decades of nation building (1950s-1970s).”

The date of the groundbreaking was a historical one since it is the anniversary of the swearing-in of Singapore’s first Cabinet as a self-governing entity in 1959.

The memorial was designed by, Kengo Kuma & Associates, an architecture firm in Japan, together with K2LD Architects, a local company.

Read related: Hefty $235M cost of Founders Memorial and $599M cost of NS Square raises concerns on use of taxpayer dollars