We were having family dinner when my dad received notification that he is activated. Without further ado, he put down his dinner and report within 30 minutes to the assigned station. He did not grumble about how he had to work again. The previous time when he was activated, he came back to us and shared with us how he could understand the feelings of the passengers who were shouting and pushing him and his coworkers. He stood and said sorry at least 100 times to everyone who was trapped. He is just a maintenance guy in SMRT.
But, there was no negativity in him despite being shouted at, at the efficiency of the company, at the long standing hours or at anything. He came back to announce that he was glad that it’s settled.
So, before we throw our frustrations and ill mannerism to any of the ground staff, please remember that they are just doing their best to get lives moving. They apologized on behalf of SMRT, not themselves. And most importantly, they have families waiting for them back home, or the unfinished dinner to eat too. A little empathy goes a long way to consider the various stakeholders invoked in this whole process. And I am sure we can do this!
And for now, my family and I are waiting for my dad to come home safely.
To call it a disaster may be an understatement for the quarter of a million people stranded by the train breakdowns last evening. Yes, we do see breakdown pretty often but what happened last night was unprecedented. 250,000 commuters were affected when no less than 57 train stations were rendered obsolete.
Some scenes of the fiasco last night
The scenes around the red dot last night were befitting of an apocalyptic blockbuster. Bus stops became obsolete, queues formed were so long that it gave the queues at Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral a good run for its money and people were lost, angry and unsatisfied, to say the least.
Bus stops became a thing of the past (Source: Renald Loh)
To add salt to the wound, just last week SMRT CEO’s Desmond Kuek’s salary increased yet again. His salary has increased mulitfold in just a span of three years and he is now paid at least 2.2 million annually. With increases in salaries of the men in-charge and fare hikes, it is only natural that commuters expect a parallel increase in service standards, or at the very least, the maintenance of current standards.
However, that was not to be. The lack of satisfaction amongst millions of Singaporeans is justified, definitely more justified than the fare hikes and Desmond Kuek’s remuneration package.
SMRT CEO Desmond Kuek
Instead of taking responsibility and being seen on the ground to ensure commuters affected by the countless breakdowns get home safely, there was little else other than statements of ‘concern.’ from Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew. From a layman’s perspective, stranded at bus stops and faced with the never ending queue in the hot, humid and sweltering crowd, reflecting on the astronomical salaries the people behind the trains and the fare hikes is a real kick in the face.
Even if we can accept occasional breakdown, or even systemic infrastructural faults, complete lack of accountability should not be tolerated. And we saw a decent dose of that last night.
But things weren’t always like that, were they? There was once a time where the MRT was the pride of all Singaporeans alike and breakdowns were as alien as curry puff syndicates . So much so, in fact, that the PAP itself incorporated the MRT in it’s election posters.
A PAP campaign poster from 1998.
Now, that is one poster we’ll probably never see revived. Not with the way things are going. This poster surfaced in 1988, when the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew was our Prime Minister. Reflecting on last night’s fiasco, I can’t help but wonder, what would he have done?
I for one feel that, if the man was still around, such an incident wouldn’t even have happened. In fact, he would have tackled the problem at its core before it snowballed to the constant breakdowns Singaporean commuters face today. See, if there were one thing that separated PAP’s Lee Kuan Yew from the PAP of today, it would boil down to this – he never hesitated to make heads roll.
“Everything works, whether its water, electricity, gas, telephone, telexes, it just has to work. If it doesn’t work, I want to know why, and if I am not satisfied, and I often was not, the chief goes, and I have to find another chief. Firing the chief is very simple.”
Mr Lee and Mdm Kwa entering the train station
To cut the long story short, if Mr Lee was in charge, heads will roll. Mr Kuek and Mr Lui would be lucky to even stay in their positions, let alone collect millions of dollars. The PAP of the past sure is a far cry from what it is today.
As then Chief District Judge Tan Siong Thye during the Committee of Inquiry on the slate of breakdowns concluded:
That the incidents were preventable and that there was a “a gaping disconnect between what was formally on record and what was happening on the ground”.
And that gap is ever-widening. The PAP of today is great for soundbites, but when it actually comes to acting on their words – well, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.
It’s about time that Singaporeans started voicing out for, as Mr Lee said, heads to roll. And the ballot box is a pretty good place to start.
SMRT Corp says the remuneration of its president and chief executive office, Desmond Kuek, “is benchmarked to peer companies” and that it “is competitive and at a responsible level.”
Kuek
Mr Kuek’s remuneration has been the target of criticisms since the company released its annual report on Monday.
In it, Mr Kuek’s salary was reported to be in the range of between S$2.25 million and S$2.5 million.
This is a multifold increase in just three years.
The former chief of defence force was roped in to head SMRT in October 2012, where he is reported to have been paid S$611,000 for the first six months.
With his new salary range, Mr Kuek is now the highest-paid SMRT CEO the company has ever employed.
His predecessor, Saw Phaik Hwa, who quit amidst widespread unhappiness over service standards, was drawing S$1.85 million at the time.
It was then a record pay scale in SMRT, which was in turn a hike over the previous record of S$1.67 million she received in 2010.
The Straits Times reported on Thursday that Mr Kuek’s salary is also higher than his counterpart at rival transport group, ComfortDelgro, which is a “significantly larger company” compared to SMRT Corp.
Mr Kua Hong Pak, the CEO of ComfortDelgro, was paid between S$1.75 million and S$2 million.
The CEO of SBS Transit, Gan Huay Kiat, received much less than Mr Kuek.
Mr Gan was paid between $500,000 to S$750,000.
Tan
SMRT Corp director, Tan Ek Kia, told the Straits Times that Mr Kuek’s remuneration package was comparable to those of other “peer companies”.
He also said that “the new CEO’s tasks were more daunting than before.”
Mr Kuek had said in another interview earlier this week that SMRT has “made tremendous progress on many fronts” but that there “is much more to be done to improve rail reliability.”
In December 2014, the TODAY newspaper reported that the number of major MRT delays had hit “a four-year high”.
SMRT Corporation has won an international award for its enterprise risk management programme – first time that SMRT has won such an award.
The public transport operator won the Delivering Value through Risk Management award at the Institute of Risk Management (IRM)’s Global Risk Awards 2015 – an international industry award recognising the highest standards of excellence in risk management.
In a media release issued on Wednesday (Feb 25), president and group CEO Desmond Kuek said SMRT was honoured to receive such an award, which was presented to the company last Thursday (Feb 19) in London. “The rigorous judging process reaffirms that SMRT’s enterprise risk management programme is truly world-class, and delivers superior value for our stakeholders,” he said.
Companies shortlisted for this award were assessed for evidence of sustained revenue enhancement, cost savings or other improvements such as reduced error rates, that can be attributed to a risk management initiative or programme; acknowledgement of the role of risk management as a value-added function within the organisation; and value delivery in the context of an overall risk management programme.
The Global Risk Awards’ judges praised SMRT’s “forensic focus on how risk management could be used to support corporate strategy”.
