AGO report: National Arts Council paid consultants S$0.41m to build S$0.47m bin centre

THE National Arts Council paid a S$0.41 million consultancy fee for the construction of a bin centre costing S$0.47 million, the Auditor-General's Office (AGO) report on accounts of government entities and statutory bodies for the financial year 2015/16 on Tuesday showed.

"There was inadequate assessment on the reasonableness of the exceptionally high consultancy fee, at 87.2 per cent of the cost of construction," said the report.

AGO's test checks of contracts for the Victoria Theatre and Victoria Concert Hall Redevelopment project also showed 47 out of 164 variation works were carried out before approvals were given. The delays in obtaining approval were up to 3.5 years.

"The large number of instances indicated a breakdown in the controls put in place to ensure that variations were properly justified and approved before works commenced," AGO said.