Remedial Actions to Address Erroneous Disbursements of SkillsFuture Singapore Grants as Identified in FY2025/2026 Auditor-General's Report

8 Mr Vikram Nair asked the Acting Minister for Manpower (a) whether the Ministry is taking remedial steps to rectify the instances of erroneous disbursements made by then-SkillsFuture Singapore under the Enhanced Training Support for Small and Medium Enterprises scheme identified in the recent Auditor-General's report; and (b) if so, whether these will have an adverse impact on the businesses or individuals that may have relied on these erroneous disbursements.

9 Mr Fadli Fawzi asked the Acting Minister for Manpower (a) whether any police report has been filed in relation to the potential gaming by training providers to obtain course fee funding from then-SkillsFuture Singapore as highlighted by the recent Auditor-General's report; (b) whether any efforts will be made to recover any grants that were disbursed to the training providers in question; and (c) if not, why not.

The Acting Minister for Manpower (Ms Jasmin Lau): Mr Speaker, Sir, may I have your permission to take oral Parliamentary Question Nos 8 and 9 together?

Mr Speaker: Please proceed.

Ms Jasmin Lau: The Skills and Workforce Development Agency (SWDA) has zero tolerance for fraud and has fraud detection measures in place. SWDA is currently investigating training providers and trainees involved in potential gaming behaviour. If ongoing investigations indicate that any criminal behaviour might be involved, Police reports will be made. We will take appropriate action, including recovering grants where warranted, if investigations confirm a breach of funding terms or other inappropriate conduct.

In relation to the erroneous disbursements of the Enhanced Training Support for Small and Medium Enterprises (ETSS), SWDA has rectified the erroneous system logic in the information technology (IT) system that led to the misclassification of firms as small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

SWDA has also revised its operating procedures to ensure accurate SME eligibility assessments going forward.

There will be no adverse impact on the businesses or individuals who received disbursements based on the prior assessments. The Ministry will honour the disbursements which were used to support real training that benefited local workers.

Mr Speaker: Mr Nair.

Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang): I thank the Acting Minister for the very clear answer. From my reading of the Auditor-General's report, it said about half the grants, about $2.24 million, were because of erroneous disbursements. I understand that the system has been rectified but the disbursements will still go out. It said another $2.08 million would have been disbursed under other subsidy schemes. Does this suggest that there is no issue within the Government that a different subsidy scheme had been used?

Ms Jasmin Lau: I thank the Member for his question. The total ETSS grant amount disbursed to the affected companies was $4.32 million, but the amount that was over-disbursed was about $2.24 million. And we described it as such because a number of these affected companies would otherwise have been eligible for grants totaling $2.08 million under the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Enhanced Subsidy scheme, which also similarly provides a 20% cost fee subsidy for the workers who are Singapore Citizens aged 40 and above.

Mr Speaker: Mr Fadli Fawzi.

Mr Fadli Fawzi (Aljunied): Thank you, Speaker, and I thank the Acting Minister for the answer given. My first supplementary question is, how will the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) strengthen oversight over the disbursement of the SkillsFuture cost fee funding? For example, will MOM consider taking such steps, such as asking participants to declare whether they are taking courses from a company they or their immediate family members are working for?

Also, I could not get the last answer. Does the Government have any information on how many SkillsFuture credits were used by course participants on these potentially gamed courses?

Ms Jasmin Lau: I thank the Member for his questions. The investigations on gaming behaviour are still ongoing, so we are unable to reveal more.

But for all such schemes, including SkillsFuture credits that we give out to support training, there will always be a risk of potential gaming. And over time, SWDA will enhance its efforts to detect and investigate different types of gaming behaviours, and where necessary, we will adjust the funding policies to address the risk of gaming.

We are also considerate and we want to ensure that individuals have good access to the grants that we give out and therefore, we do not want it to be too onerous on both individual workers and also employers in supporting Singaporeans to access training.