JTC Corporation has confirmed 400 cases of unauthorised subletting in an ongoing investigation that will be completed by the first half of next year.
The update to Parliament yesterday came in response to Workers' Party MP Louis Chua (Sengkang GRC), who noted an Auditor-General's Office (AGO) report flagging that JTC premises may have been sublet to 26,000 entities without approval.
Second Minister for Trade and Industry Tan See Leng said the 26,000 business entities were identified because they had indicated a JTC site as their registered address, even though they were not lessees, tenants or authorised sub-lessees.
He added that JTC has so far found that 1,900 of these firms have been deregistered, while 700 are on divested properties where its subletting policy does not apply.
A further 12,400 are related entities of JTC lessees and tenants. "For these cases, even if there was subletting of space, there would not have been any potential loss of revenue as subletting fees would not have applied," Dr Tan said.
These 15,000 entities account for around 60 per cent of the cases the AGO highlighted. JTC has prioritised investigations for the remaining 11,000 or so entities.
Dr Tan said JTC's preliminary investigations have found that a significant number are using its premises as their registered address, even though they are not physically operating out of the premises. "These cases also do not involve any unauthorised subletting of space."
He said: "JTC is strengthening its processes and inspection regime, and will make use of data analytics to better detect incidences of unauthorised subletting. It will take enforcement action against lessees or tenants for confirmed cases of unauthorised subletting."
Enforcement can range from measures to recover the sublet fees owed to JTC to legal action.
The AGO was the subject of two other questions from Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, who asked if the Manpower Ministry will undertake a more wide-scale review of the number of successful career switches under the Professional Conversion Programme (PCP). This came after the AGO noted that three programme partners did not carry out adequate verification of career conversion for 11 cases involving 15 participants.
Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said: "Workforce Singapore (WSG) has... verified that all 15 participants changed their job scopes and converted into new job roles through their respective PCPs.
"WSG will be developing a new PCP guide... by the end of the year. The document will include guidelines on how career conversion should be consistently assessed, as well as the critical information that programme partners should report to ensure better and consistent monitoring of PCP outcomes."
She said programme partners will focus on the most important outcome indicators, such as the number of placements and participants who completed training.
WSG will also conduct sampling checks of up to 20 per cent of PCP placements by its programme partners on a regular basis.
Mr Singh also asked how Enterprise Singapore (ESG) will ensure strict compliance of the Enterprise Development Grant, which states that firms must have at least 30 per cent local shareholding.
Minister of State for Trade and Industry Low Yen Ling said ESG had supported almost 5,000 projects under the grant as at last month, and checks are performed during the grant approval process. If firms breach conditions, ESG will withhold the disbursement or claw back the grant. The firms might also be put on a watchlist for stricter scrutiny in future grant applications.
