PM Lee speaks up for Minister Lui over rail woes

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PM Lee speaks up for Minister Lui over rail woes

March 13th, 2015 | Author: Editorial

PM Lee

Yesterday (12 Mar), PM Lee wrote on his Facebook page [Link] trying to justify the recent spate of MRT train faults and mishaps happened in recent weeks.
Speaking up for his Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew, Mr Lee wrote:
Maintaining and building our public transport system is a tough, high pressure job.

Every night after trains stop running, the maintenance and repair crews have only a few hours to maintain the tracks and trains, to get them ready for another day of service.
The Land Transport Authority and rail operators have also been working hard to reduce downtime and malfunctions. Unfortunately we’ve had a series of incidents recently, but we are making steady progress.
Minister Lui Tuck Yew told Parliament yesterday that in the next 12 to 15 months we will add more trains, and complete upgrading the signalling system on the North-South Line. With the new train lines we are building, by 2030 our rail network will be nearly as dense as New York and London.

It may take a while, but commuters will benefit from all these efforts.
Mr Lee appears to be showing much tolerance towards mistakes and lapses occurring under Minister Lui’s watch.
The Alternative View [Link] commented:
“Such frequent train breakdown and disruptions cause massive inconvenience to tens of thousands and lead to lost hours of work, students being late for exams and school, as well as business professionals being late for appointments.

How come we don’t see the same forbearance in the case of AHPETC?”
Meanwhile, yet another SMRT train fault occured yesterday. An SMRT train travelling on the North-South Line towards Jurong East stalled at the Yishun platform in the afternoon due to another “signalling fault”.

There was a delay of about 15 minutes to trains moving in both directions “to reroute trains to minimise impact to service”, SMRT said. Normal service was resumed after about an hour.

Many commuters took to social media to complain. One netizen wrote, “Seriously SMRT, step up your game leh. How many train delays and train faults you want in a year?”

SMRT’s Vice President of Corporate Information and Communications, COL (NS) Patrick Nathan, said the company is reviewing its processes for updating commuters via Twitter with a view to providing even more timely updates. COL Nathan used to be a career soldier in SAF.

Minister Lui has “vowed” to claw back confidence in Singapore’s rail system.


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