When will PAP get rid of town councils?

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

One-stop municipal issues office opens

A SMARTPHONE app for people to report on municipal matters and send them directly to a one-stop office will be ready by the start of next year.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Grace Fu said this in an update on her Facebook page yesterday when announcing that the Municipal Services Office (MSO), which she heads, has officially opened for business.

The much anticipated office, which will handle municipal issues that involve multiple government agencies, will use smart technology to make it convenient for Singaporeans to provide feedback on such issues, she said.

A smartphone application, which the MSO said was being developed, will be launched by January next year.

It will allow people to snap photos of trouble spots, tag on location information and send this directly to the MSO, which can then use it to respond to complaints quickly, Ms Fu said.

The MSO will also develop an "integrated system" that different public agencies can use to share and monitor complaints on municipal matters, and work together to resolve them.

This follows Ms Fu's announcement last month that the MSO would establish a standard procedure for public agencies to receive, handle and track feedback, to ensure that complaints are attended to within a stipulated time.

The new system will be used by the eight agencies that the MSO is working with for a start.

These are the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, national water agency PUB, National Parks Board, Housing Board, Land Transport Authority (LTA), Singapore Police Force (SPF), People's Association, and National Environment Agency.

Ms Fu, who has visited the SPF and LTA to find out more about how the agencies handle feedback on municipal issues, said she would be visiting the six other agencies over the next few months.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced during the National Day Rally in August that the MSO would be set up to ensure public agencies coordinate better to provide services that involve more than one of them.

It comes under the Ministry of National Development (MND).

Even before its official opening on Wednesday, it had been receiving feedback and resolving cases, Ms Fu said in an earlier interview last month.

Writing about her visit to the MSO yesterday, she said: "The MSO has been set up... Happy to meet the officers, all enthusiastic and passionate about the mission of MSO."

The MSO has a website at mnd.gov.sg/mso/index.htm, which lists the hotline numbers of the various agencies categorised by the matters they handle, such as public cleanliness, mosquito breeding and transport infrastructure, among other things.

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