Daily Briefing: 3,000 civil servants to receive $10m compensation over HR record errors; Maritime systems startup BeeX wins SPC 2020

And COE prices close mostly higher in latest bidding exercise.

From ChannelNewsAsia:

About 3,000 public service officers past and present will be compensated with a total of around $10m after errors were found in the Civil Service’s human resource (HR) records, the Public Service Division (PSD) said on 18 November.

“The errors arose primarily because of human errors in data entry and coding of the HR and payroll IT systems,” PSD said.

“The IT systems also had inadequate error detection capabilities.”

Most of the errors—discovered during upgrading of the systems—are related to inaccuracies in the full-time National Service duration records of male civil servants.

“Since 2002, the Civil Service has recognised the ‘fitness cut’ period that a full-time national serviceman was eligible for, as part of the NS period recognised for the purposes of determining starting salary and service benefits,” PSD said, referring to the reduction in NS liability granted to servicemen who meet physical fitness requirements.

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From e27:

Homegrown autonomous maritime systems startup BeeX has emerged as the winner of the Smart Port Challenge 2020 (SPC) in Singapore, according to a joint press statement by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and National University of Singapore (NUS).

The second and third places were bagged by FUELSAVE, which enables utility vehicles to reduce their emissions in a sustainable way, and Vulcan AI, which helps enterprises cut costs through its AI solutions.

The trio also won prize money of approximately $10,000 (US$7,500), $4,900 (US$3,700) and $3,000 (US$2,300), respectively.

Founded in 2018, BeeX aims to reduce the costs and inefficiencies for underwater inspections via its autonomous underwater vehicles and unmanned surface vessels.

The SPC is a programme under the Port Innovation Ecosystem Reimagined @ BLOCK71 (PIER71), a collaboration between the MPA and NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of the NUS.

Read more here. 

From ChannelNewsAsia:

Certificate of Entitlement (COE) premiums closed higher in all categories except for commercial vehicles in the latest bidding exercise on 18 November.

For Category A cars, or those 1,600cc and below with horsepower not exceeding 130bhp, premiums closed at $37,690, up from $35,990 in the last exercise.

Premiums for larger and more powerful cars in Category B rose to $41,101 from $39,000.

COEs for commercial vehicles, which include goods vehicles and buses, fell to $30,334 from $31,502 in the previous bidding exercise.

Motorcycle premiums closed at $7,300, up from $7,251 in the last exercise.

Read more here.