Okay, a little update about my work so far.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m in the VFM review section, which deals with looking into the budget expenditure and cost efficiencies of the various processes in Ms and SBs. Last week, I helped my colleague research on data on the topic of uni tuition fee loans. The problem with this is that as the tuition fee increases, the max amt of loan (reflected by the percentage of the tuition fee) has also increased over the past few years. However, the terms and conditions of such loans have not been revised for many years. Some of these requirements include guarantor requirements, max repayment period, min repayment amt etc. So we’re trying to investigate whether the current t&c are up to date and correctly reflect current economic conditions. To write this paper, we need a lot of data and cold hard facts to substantiate the paper. So what I did was to get data on diff types of financial assistance options available to a typical uni student like loans, bursaries and scholarships, the wages of Singaporeans over the past years, tuition fee revisions, how long it takes for graduates to find jobs etc. I feel like a RA (research assistant), more than an accountant. You prolly can’t see how this is audit right? My sentiments exactly.

The next project which I’m currently involved in is about judicature review. For this, we are looking at the different courts in sg and deal with a few issues:

• Whether the court fees are under priced/over priced
• What the court fees are for
• Whether facilities in supreme court are well utilized
• Whether there is scope for more collaboration between the 2 courts (supreme and subordinate) to optimize resources

Ah, this sounds more like audit. Internal audit. Something that is more interesting than vouching of documents.
What I did yesterday was to go through the courts’ websites to gather data about court fees. There are quite a lot of fees to pay to the courts: for every document you file, the costs is about 0.80 per page; filing a notice of appeal is few hundred dollars; hearing fees are the most ex, ranging from $2000 to $7000 per day, depending on the type of courts you visit and the no of days of hearing.
I also have to understand all the law jargon and terms they use like writs, affidavits, subpoena, summonses etc. Don’t understand? Check dictionary.com. And I read through the whole statute on the rules of court, which took me the entire day. It’s just like going through companies act again, but much simpler.

Now I’m reading up on some of the publications of supreme court, which has stuff about the sg judiciary structure, the supreme court bench, the law and technological reforms they underwent, the key cases that shaped sg law etc. These cases are really interesting, which include those I read about in company law, like Lim Weng Kee v PP, Show Theatres v Shaw Theatres and Intraco v Multi-Pak.

I see some meaning in the work that I do and although the pay (I should say allowance) is pretty pathetic as compared to those interning in banks, I enjoy my work here very much.

Okay, I’ll try to blog more often now that sch’s over. :)

Labels: work work work