News

I refer to the letter from the Public Guardian, (Dec 27). I am a joint deputy who was appointed in early 2020, and I filed annual reports manually in 2021 and 2022. My next report is due in early 2023. The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) no longer accepts manual reports; all reports must be filed through the Office of the Public Guardian Online System (OPGO). I ran into several frustrating issues when I tried the OPGO. First, there is a section for me to update my personal particulars. After I did this, the status still showed “in progress” although it took most of the information from the MyInfo service. There is also a “nationality” field where I needed to select an option from a drop-down menu. But I was not able to make a selection. OPG has said it is a known bug. Second, the system requires me to update the different Central Provident Fund (CPF) account balances as at the beginning and end of the reporting period. I did not have to do this when I filed manually. This makes the reporting more tedious, as I need to request the statement of account from the CPF Board. I also do not see the need to include the information, as I am looking after only property and affairs. The Finance Tracker is even more tedious to use.  Previously, I just needed to attach 12 bank statements to show all the income and expenses for the entire year in one scanned document. In the OPGO, I have to attach a document for each transaction, without which the system will not capture the transaction.  For example, if in a month there are four transactions, say, for salary, Workfare, bank interest and bank account fee, I would need to attach the same bank statement four times, just for one month.  This is a waste of time. While I support the use of an online system, I expected it to be simpler and more efficient. This is not the case for the OPGO.