Payouts under Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme Subjected to Clawback

9 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for Manpower (a) whether there have been any suspected cases of fraudulent applications under the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) and, if so, what follow-up actions have been taken; and (b) whether there are plans to audit the SIRS to ensure proper administration and governance.

10 Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim asked the Minister for Manpower (a) in the past three months, what is the proportion of payouts under the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) that has been subjected to clawback; and (b) what are the major reasons for the clawback.

The Minister for Manpower (Mrs Josephine Teo): Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to take Question Nos 9 and 10 together?

Mr Speaker: Yes, please.

Mrs Josephine Teo: Sir, MOM and NTUC take public feedback seriously, including those from whistle-blowers. We are aware that there were scams inviting individuals who were not the intended recipients of the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme or SIRS to apply for payouts. These cases have been surfaced to the Police for investigation.

Government grants such as SIRS aim to provide assistance to Singaporeans who need help. For prudent stewardship of public monies and as with all other Government schemes, SIRS is subject to financial audit. This will be done by an external auditor appointed by NTUC, the scheme administrator.

In addition, MOM also conducts our own audit before and after the final payout tranche was disbursed. The audit of applications is still on-going. For timely assistance to self-employed individuals, eligibility was assessed based on applicants’ declarations of their employment income and number of properties owned. Those whose declarations met the eligibility criteria received payouts. Subsequent audit affirmed the eligibility of most successful applicants. But we also uncovered some cases of erroneous declarations, constituting about 0.5% of all successful SIRS applications.

To be fair and consistent to all applicants, those with erroneous declarations have been approached to refund their SIRS payouts. Some have already done so, and we will reach out to the rest individually to give them time to do so.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim (Sengkang): I thank the Minister for the clarification. I have two quick follow-up supplementary questions.

The first has to do with the fact that given the SIRS criteria were so stringent, at least, based on the number of rejected SIRS applications among my residents, why is it that we did turn out to have this number of false positive? Was it essentially due false reporting on the part of residents? If that is the case, then was it because that they were misled in the kind of criteria they needed to submit for the applications?

And then, relatedly, my second question is whether there are actions to ameliorate this kind of false positives. So, for instance, if someone faced clawback, would they be able to then pay back the amount in instalments, for example?

Mrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, the Member has described some cases as false positives. I take that to mean that they were actually the intended recipients of SIRS but they are not going to get it. Actually, what we are discussing in this Parliamentary Question that has been filed is that they are not the intended recipients of SIRS but because of the way in which they had declared their incomes, they appeared to be eligible and the payout was given to them. So, steps are being taken now to ask these individuals to refund the amount.

It is perhaps useful to describe the whole situation here. SIRS had a very large group of recipients that were auto-included. We had used past data to ascertain their eligibility based on the criteria that was set out. And without asking these individuals to submit further information, the payout was processed, it was disbursed to them. This was one group.

But we also know that basing our disbursement on past information would potentially exclude a group of intended recipients whose data, whose information, have been updated but which we were not in possession of. That is why a category was opened up for applications.

In this period where the Government was actually processing and disbursing a very large number of grant and support schemes to households, to businesses, each of these had very tight timelines to follow. As a result, in order to meet the timelines, there were many occasions where we decided that we should take the individuals' declarations in good faith and process the payments.

However, as stewards of public funds, we do have the duty to audit. In this situation, one good outcome is that the audit showed that most of the successful applicants had actually valid reasons to have applied and they met the eligibility criteria. But there was a very small number, for whatever reasons, they may have been mistaken in their own understanding of their circumstances, it is sometimes possible that a person did not quite know what he was earning and he made a declaration based on a mistaken understanding. So, we will reach out to them and try to sort these things out.

Mr Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh.

Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied): Thank you, Speaker. I am following up on the answer by the Minister for Manpower. Minister for Manpower alluded earlier in her reply to cases that have been referred to the Police. Can the Minister share how many cases, in absolute number, have been referred to the Police?

Secondly, the Minister spoke of erroneous declarations – 0.5% were erroneous. Again, the absolute number would be appreciated.

To that end, I had a resident who approached me at my MPS who declared openly that he earned $10,000 a month but he had certain circumstances which he reported accordingly, and he was given the SIRS payout. Now, it is being clawed back.

My point is not so much about this case but how many cases were there where it was NTUC or MOM which actually approved a SIRS payout, even though it was well outside the qualifying criteria, and now, it is calling for a clawback? How many cases involved, I would not call it a mistake but actions that were taken by NTUC or SIRS, resulting in a clawback?

Mrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, I think Mr Singh's second and third questions are basically asking for the same information. What is the number of cases where we have approached the individuals for refunds of the SIRS payouts? I mentioned in my reply that it was about 0.5% of the successful applicants. The number of successful applicants is something in the order of 200,000. There are still some that are pending processing, but 0.5% would come to about 1,000. I think that is the number that applies it to both his second and his third questions.

To the first question, how many cases have been referred to the Police? I do not have the number offhand, perhaps if the Member were to file a Parliamentary Question, we could address it appropriately. However, I should add that the investigations are still on-going and it would be inappropriate for me to comment too much on it right now.

Mr Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh.

Mr Pritam Singh: I thank the Minister. Let me just parse my second and third supplementary questions a bit more finely. I apologise if I did not make it clear. In her reply, Minister spoke of erroneous declarations, the suggestion being that it was the applicant who made the erroneous declaration. And the third supplementary question really was looking at the number of cases where NTUC or MOM acknowledged that a person fell outside the qualifying criteria and then decided actually, no, this should not have been approved in the first place and hence is now clawing the SIRS payout back. How many cases are we referring to in that regard?

Mrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, Mr Singh mentioned one case. I myself have not come across another but I believe that there may have been a few. I do not have the number that I can share with him right now.