Excerpt from “Today” newspaper 26 Sep 2007

According to Auditor-General's Office (AGO) report released in July, highlighting its accounting lapses to the National Library Board (NLB), they sent out mailers to get members to pay up ASAP. The AGO's latest annual report uncovered, among other things, that some of the errant borrowers, in fact, worked at the NLB — 27 employees had owed the board a total of $1,306 in fines and charges for more than five years. Seven staff members were found to owe between $100 and $500 each. Imagine that, NLB own employees need reminders to up their fines.

Quirk: They must be hard-working employees since they do not read during working hours and have to catch up on their reading after hours.

Last year, NLB wrote off $3.5 Mil in unpaid fines. Urged by the AGO to "step up its recovery of outstanding charges".

Cost of the reminders via mail per quarter year… less than 1 per cent of the amount to be recovered. SGD 50,000 per Quarter Year. Total SGD 200,000 per year.

Ideas: Put their members database to good use, which in the first place should not have allow further borrowing if outstanding is not settled even though materials are returned.

This goes to show that the NLB is too generous with the public funds (go visit their Bras Basah library.

Quirk: For the past months, I have been getting these reminders for members that are no longer staying at the address currently (my previous, previous owner of this flat). NLB, try working with the ICA to get the records right.