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SINGAPORE: After being laid off from her job, a former health care assistant continued to receive her monthly salary from Tan Tock Seng Hospital due to a bug in the human resources system.
Between August 2018 and December 2019, he received more than S $ 32,000 in monthly wages in his bank account for a job he no longer had, and he dishonestly transferred the sums from the account for his own use.
She also used her alleged “employee” status to obtain copayments for hospital bills.
Nurul Atiqah Kamsari, 25, pleaded guilty on Thursday (December 10) to two counts of dishonest property stripping and deceiving hospital staff into believing that he was entitled to medical benefits. Two other similar charges will be taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court heard that Nurul worked as a health care assistant at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) from March 2017 to August 2018, earning a monthly salary of S $ 1,630. He was also entitled to shift assignment.
You did not show up for work on August 16, 2018 and August 17, 2018, and you did not tell your supervisors or colleagues why you were absent. Nurul has since stopped reporting to work at TTSH, court documents said.
“As the defendant was absent from work for more than two consecutive business days without a reasonable excuse or without a prior leave approved by her supervisor … (she) was deemed to have voluntarily terminated TTSH service,” the court documents added .
His last day of employment at the hospital was August 17, 2018.
But her details, including her bank account number, erroneously remained in the hospital’s human resources system, Assistant District Attorney Emily Koh said.
As the HR system was linked to the hospital payroll system, Nurul’s previously collected monthly salary continued to be credited to his POSB account each month.
JOB LEFT BUT STILL RECEIVED HIS SALARY
Nurul continued to receive his “salary” from the hospital for more than a year after he left, and he knew the money had been wrongly credited to him, the court heard.
However, he did not return the money or inform the hospital about it. Instead, he took the cash out of his account using wire transfers, cash withdrawals, or debit card deductions.
In addition to this, when she went to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital for a consultation in October 2019, she told the cashier that she was an employee of Tan Tock Seng Hospital and was entitled to staff medical benefits. Both hospitals are owned by the National Healthcare Group and these benefits are offered to their staff members.
She left the hospital without having to pay her bill, as Tan Tock Seng Hospital covered part of her bill as an “employee” and the other part had to be deducted from her “salary”.
HOSPITAL DISCOVERES AN ERROR
A senior executive in the human resources department at Tan Tock Seng Hospital learned on January 9 of this year that Nurul had continued to receive his monthly salary despite his dismissal.
The hospital initiated internal investigations and found that Nurul had visited Khoo Teck Puat Hospital twice and incurred medical bills that were covered by Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
The top executive filed a police report on January 23. Nurul admitted that he had used a sum of S $ 32,241.76 that was wrongly credited to him as wages for his own purposes. She has not made any restitution for this and no money was recovered from her POSB account.
However, he returned the S $ 29.60 in medical bills to the hospital.
The prosecutor said Nurul had a prior robbery conviction in 2010, for which she was sentenced to a children’s home.
The defense requested a postponement since it had prepared its mitigation on the sentence previously presented by the prosecution of four months in prison. Now they seek more than that.
Nurul will return to court for mitigation and sentencing in January.
The CNA has contacted Tan Tock Seng Hospital for more information.
