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Tag: Singapore

  • Gerald Giam: Caught In The NSEW Line Breakdown

    Gerald Giam: Caught In The NSEW Line Breakdown

    I was caught in the massive breakdown of the North-South and East-West Line (NSEWL) of the MRT yesterday evening as I was heading to a meeting at the WP HQ in Jalan Besar. When I reached Dover station at about 7.05pm, the eastbound train was already at the platform but with all its cabin lights off. I got onto the train anyway, but waited almost 5 minutes before it finally moved off. The westbound train on the opposite track was similarly stalled. My train stopped midway to the next station and all its lights went out again. This pattern was to repeat itself several more times over the next 25 minutes. When I reached Outram Park station at about 7.35pm, the lights in the train went out a final time and we were told to detrain as it was no longer in service.

    The PA system announcements at the station informed us that train service on the entire NSEWL had been suspended and free shuttle buses were available. So I exited the station thinking I could hop onto one of the buses. Big mistake! The street level was packed with people and there were no buses to be seen and no directional signs to guide the stranded commuters. Someone asked me where the buses were. I told him honestly that I had no idea.

    Knowing that it would be pointless to attempt taking a cab, I headed back down to the station, against the flow of the crowd, hoping to get in again and take the North-East Line (NEL). But all the fare gates were closed and I was told by an SMRT staff that I had to exit and walk around the station to get into the NEL entrance. I finally boarded the NEL and arrived at my meeting almost half an hour late.

    I consider myself fortunate that I was able to hop onto the NEL. The guy sitting next to me on the East-West Line train (before it stopped at Outram) said that he was heading to his home in Simei. I think he, like hundreds of thousands of other commuters, probably got home much later than usual.

    This 3.5 hour service disruption, which happened simultaneously on the two busiest MRT lines during the Tuesday evening rush hour, was probably the most serious service disruption ever. I had flashbacks to November 2011, when I had another close shave — I just missed getting on one of the trains from City Hall station that was to eventually stall in the middle of the tunnel.

    According to SMRT and LTA, the outage was due to a power fault. Preliminary investigations found that a faulty train could have caused the power to trip. I find it astonishing that a fault with a single train could cause power to be cut to trains at all 58 stations on the NSEWL. Is there so little redundancy in the system? Or are all the circuits strung together in series like a cheap set of Christmas tree lights?

    As of the time of this writing, it is still unclear if the MRT service will be available in time for the Wednesday morning rush hour. SMRT has already advised commuters to make alternative travel plans. Both the Minister for Transport and LTA have come out to apologise for the breakdown and demanded that the faults be investigated and rectified. That is little comfort for the quarter-of-a-million or so commuters who suffered this massive inconvenience and frustration.

    The Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the November 2011 MRT disruptions had identified maintenance (or lack thereof) as a key cause of the multiple breakdowns then. Now, almost 4 years later, with a new CEO at the helm who promised to focus more on engineering and maintenance capabilities, we seem to be back to square one. What can we expect moving forward? Another COI?

     

    Source: http://geraldgiam.sg

  • Root Cause Not Found, Lee Hsien Loong ‘Very Concerned’

    Root Cause Not Found, Lee Hsien Loong ‘Very Concerned’

    While an overnight sweep of the North-South and East-West lines turned up several faults including damaged power cables and water leakage, the authorities and train operator SMRT were still none the wiser about the root cause of yesterday’s (July 7) unprecedented breakdown — prompting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to express his concern that the problem, which brought the two lines to a complete halt and left about 250,000 commuters stranded across the island, could flare up again.

    Mr Lee noted that Land Transport Authority and SMRT staff worked overnight to check the trains, tracks and cables and the trains resumed full service throughout today without a glitch. “But because we have not identified the root cause of the power trips, we are still very worried that the problem may recur,” Mr Lee wrote on Facebook.

    Mr Lee said he was “very concerned” about the breakdown and was briefed about the situation at the LTA Operations Centre today. “We are still trying to find out the cause of the problem… Hope we identify and resolve the faults quickly, to prevent further inconvenience to commuters.”

    Earlier, the LTA and SMRT held a press conference where SMRT Trains managing director Lee Ling Wee said that overnight checks identified two damaged power cables along the North-South line near Bishan MRT station, a faulty relay system at Kranji’s power substation, and a water leakage close to the third-rail insulator at Tanjong Pagar station.

    While these problems had been rectified, they did not provide a conclusive picture of what could have caused the multiple power trips, which intensified and forced SMRT to shut down the lines — which made up the bulk of the Republic’s MRT network and ran through 54 stations.

    The problem, which was quite unlike anything SMRT had dealt with before, was baffling its experts. “We are not 100 per cent sure on the root cause,” he said. He noted that it could be a combination or any of several factors such as from train and track conditions, train frequency, and the amount of moisture on the tracks.

    There are protective relay systems installed in power substations along the North-South and East-West lines, which are activated when voltage between the running rail and electrical earth surges beyond a safe limit. The fact that the running rail is connected across both lines complicates investigations, he said. “So it is very hard for us to isolate exactly where this breakdown in insulation was …(But) if we don’t do it, it will happen in different parts of the network, it is unpredictable, it is random, depending on how many train runs in the system. Where there are more trains, the chances of it happening is higher,” he said.

    Train services ground to a halt at 7.15pm yesterday. The first signs of trouble surfaced more than an hour earlier, when SMRT detected multiple power trips. These were initially rectified but the power trips intensified in frequency and impact, and eventually caused nine trains to stall between stations. SMRT managed to get these trains moving again to the nearest stations before it shut down the system.

    Working through the night, engineers checked the trains, tracks and power systems for anomalies such as burn marks, dislodged and dangling cables. Preliminary investigation initially narrowed the problem to a a faulty train but it was later found to be normal.

    Mr Lee Ling Wee said the glitches discovered during the overnight checks were not identified during routine maintenance checks, which are conducted every six months, with more comprehensive checks carried out once a year.

    “Our routine checks do cover these (components) but … it’s not like (checks are done) every day … so you can expect in an ageing system, some of these may fail in between the intervals,” he said. “There (was) no reason for us to suspect that these things will fail, because all regular maintenance checks have not uncovered such issues in the past.”

    Nevertheless, he said that SMRT may increase the frequency of the checks and look into installing monitoring devices that can spot faults on a real-time basis. With 45 more trains to be added to the North-South and East-West lines after the completion of sleeper replacement and re-signalling work, SMRT will engage external consultants to assess the lines’ power capacity and robustness “with more urgency” following the breakdown, he added. LTA chief executive Chew Men Leong said a new voltage-limiting device has been piloted for Downtown Line 1, which can isolate power trips.

    Transport experts whom TODAY spoke to called on SMRT to step up its maintenance regime, including by tapping technology.

    SIM University transport analyst Park Byung Joon said that real-time sensors may help nip glitches in the bud. “Since it is not physically possible to expand maintenance hours, it is time to think about more expensive investments to enhance the maintenance schedule,” he said.

    National University of Singapore engineering professor Lee Der-Horng added: “Perhaps (SMRT) should shorten the intervals between routine checks. I would have thought that SMRT would have accumulated enough experience and data to determine an optimal maintenance regime.”

    At the press conference, both Mr Chew and SMRT chief executive Desmond Kuek apologised again to affected commuters. Mr Kuek said: “(The incident) is a stark reminder that the journey to bringing about a higher order of reliability and assurance is a difficult one … but we are committed to it.”

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • Amos Yee Given 4 Weeks Backdated Jail Sentence

    Amos Yee Given 4 Weeks Backdated Jail Sentence

    Teen blogger Amos Yee Pang Sang was on Monday (Jul 6) sentenced to four weeks’ jail, backdated to Jun 2.

    Yee was found guilty of two charges – one for making offensive or wounding remarks against Christianity and another for circulating obscene imagery. A third charge, for the teen blogger’s statements on the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew in a YouTube video, was withdrawn.

    Yee intends to appeal against the conviction, said his lawyer Alfred Dodwell.

    “The journey here has been long and arduous, ridden with lots of obstacles and hurdles. We have somehow gotten here,” said Mr Dodwell. “We have confirmed with our client that he wants to appeal against the conviction.”

    “Let’s not run away with the idea that just because he’s remorseful and stuff, that is in relation to the social context. Whether this was a crime or not, still remains a question we want to determine in High Court,” Mr Dodwell added.

    The 16-year-old has been remanded at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) for the past two weeks to assess his suitability for a mandatory treatment order, after a doctor said that Yee may have autism-spectrum disorder.

    Mr Dodwell on Sunday night confirmed reports that the blogger was in hospital. Yee has “not been eating well, perhaps loss of appetite or no appetite, understandably so and hence his blood sugar went down,” he said.

    “I’ve not been told of a hunger strike,” added Mr Dodwell, referring to the blogger’s hospitalisation.

    Yee had previously rejected the option of probation and a term in the Reformative Training Centre as a sentence, sticking to his original plea for a jail term

     

    Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

  • SG High Commissioner Rebuts The Economist

    SG High Commissioner Rebuts The Economist

    The Economist writing about the media situation in Singapore last month (‘Zip it‘, 24 Jun) talked about Singapore bloggers getting into trouble with the government.

    The Economist described a peculiar situation where the prosecution was pushing for rehabilitation and counselling while the defendant, in this case 16-year-old teenage blogger Amos Yee, wanted a jail sentence.

    Amos was found guilty of circulating an obscene image and insulting Christians, reported The Economist.

    “As it turns out, both sides will need to wait,” it said. Amos is remanded for another 2 weeks to undergo psychiatric assessment. The Economist then quoted Human Rights Watch and the UN Human Rights Office, which called for Amos’ release.

    The Economist also mentioned that on 3 May 2015, The Real Singapore (TRS) was shut down by the Singapore government. The Media Developement Authority alleged that TRS had “fabricated articles [and] published prohibited material… objectionable on the grounds of public interest, public order and national harmony [and] sought to incite anti-foreigner sentiments in Singapore”.

    Another blogger, Roy Ngerng, has paid Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s Prime Minister, S$29,000 ($21,653) in legal fees and expenses, and may pay more in damages, The Economist further reported. This is with reference to the current defamation lawsuit brought by Mr Lee against Roy.

    The Economist concluded:

    It comes as no surprise then that, in the most recent World Press Freedom Index, Singapore ranked 153rd of 180 countries, falling three spots from last year’s rankings.

    Any hope that Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party would loosen controls over the media—as part of efforts to present a softer public face after its relatively poor showing in the last election—now seem misplaced.

    Singapore’s government has proven itself as willing as ever to use the colonial-era Sedition Act as well as the 2014 Protection from Harassment Act to stifle dissent.

    It also quoted Cherian George, a former NTU professor now teaching in Hong Kong, as saying that the Singapore government “still acts as though it can’t win an argument on the merits, nor trust the public to reach wise conclusions through open debate”.

    High Commissioner Foo Chi Hsia rebuts The Economist

    In a letter published in The Economist today (4 Jul), Singapore High Commissioner to UK, Foo Chi Hsia, sought to rebut The Economist’s article.

    She accused The Economist of publishing an “unbalanced” article. Taking the moral high ground, Ms Foo said that in seeking “wise conclusions through open debate”, integrity and honest reporting are as important as the right to speak freely.

    Ms Foo’s letter as it appeared in The Economist:

    Your piece “Zip it” (June 24th) is unbalanced. It champions unfettered freedom of speech without providing the context of cases mentioned. Amos Yee was convicted for insulting the faith of Christians. In a small, highly diverse society like Singapore we guard our social peace jealously and make no apologies for it. We cannot allow people to denigrate or offend the religious beliefs of others: the result is anger and violence, as we have seen elsewhere. Protection from hate speech is also a basic human right.

    The Media Developement Authroity (MDA) suspended TRS because it had published articles deliberately stirring up anti-foreigner sentiments. It fabricated stories to boost traffic and advertising revenue.

    Mr Lee Hsien Loong’s defamation suit against Roy Ngerng is a completely separate matter. The Court found that Roy Ngerng had defamed Mr Lee Hsien Loong. Freedom of speech does not extend to freedom to defame others. Yet despite Mr Ngerng’s questionable tactics, the government has not shied away from debating questions about the Central Provident Fund. Ngerng himself engaged Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on the topic at a public forum, an exchange carried by the national broadsheet.

    In seeking “wise conclusions through open debate”, integrity and honest reporting are as important as the right to speak freely.

    FOO CHI HSIA
    High Commissioner for Singapore
    London

    Who is Foo Chi Hsia?

    Ms Foo Chi Hsia joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September 1994.

    She was Director in-charge of the International Economics Directorate responsible for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and WTO matters from 2008 to 2009 and concurrently Senior Deputy Director in the Southeast Asia Directorate (April to September 2008).

    She was Second Director in the Southeast Asia Directorate from 2008 to 2010 before her appointment as Director-General of the Americas Directorate from August 2010 to July 2014.

    Ms Foo served at the Singapore Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from 1997 to 2003, including as the Political Coordinator during Singapore’s term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council from 2001 to 2002.

    Ms Foo graduated with a Bachelor of Law in 1994, and obtained a Master in Public Management in 2005, both from the National University of Singapore. She was conferred the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2008.

    Ms Foo assumed her post as High Commissioner to the UK on 1 September last year.

     

    Source: www.tremeritus.com

  • Polyclinic Fees Up: Government Healthcare Operating Expenditure % Lower Than 1970?

    Polyclinic Fees Up: Government Healthcare Operating Expenditure % Lower Than 1970?

    TOC’s article, “Polyclinics up consultation fees from 1 July” (Jul 2) notes that “The consultation fees at the 18 polyclinics around Singapore have been increased from 1 July.”

    The article further went on to state, “The two groups which oversee the clinics, Singhealth and National Healthcare Group (NHG), have updated  their websites with the new charges … for Singaporean adults at NHG polyclinics are up $0.60, from $11.30 to $11.90″.

    70% increase last 18 years?

    As polyclinic fees were $7 in 1997 – it has increased by up to 70 per cent ($11.90 divided by $7) with the periodic increases in the last 18 years.

    Inflation – 35% increase last 18 years?

    Against this increase – inflation was about 35 per cent during the same period.

    So, why increase polyclinic fees which cater to the poorest Singaporeans by double (70%) the rate of inflation (35%)?

    Polyclinics are for the poorest?

    While I can understand and appreciate the need to raise fees, I would like to suggest that fees for polyclinics be kept unchanged, because the needy should be spared the brunt of rising costs of so many increases in the cost of living.

    1970 – govt healthcare operating expenditure 9.5% 

    According to the Department of Statistics’ (DOS) Singapore, 1965-1995 Statistical Highlights: A Review of 30 Years’ Development – government operating expenditure on health as a percentage of total government operating expenditure was 9.5 per cent in 1970.

    2005 – govt healthcare operating expenditure 8.1% 

    According to the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) reply to the Straits Times Forum on 29 March 2007 –  government operating expenditure on health as a percentage of total government operating expenditure was 8.1 per cent in 2005.

    2013 – govt healthcare operating expenditure 9.2% 

    Using data from the MOH web site, I calculated the government operating expenditure on health as a percentage of total government operating expenditureto be 8.0, 9.2 and 9.8 per cent in FY2012, FY2013 and FY2014 respectively.

    Any country spent less compared to 43 years ago?

    Are there any developed countries in the world whose government operating expenditure on health as a percentage of total government operating expenditure, was lower in 2013 (9.2%), 2012 (8.0%), 2005 (8.1%) compared to 1970 (9.5%)?

    Very low public healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP?

    Health expenditure, public (% of GDP)

    Data from World Bank

    The increase in polyclinic fees now underscores the fact that our public healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP, at 1.9 per cent in FY2014, is one of the lowest in the world.

    WB

     

    Source: www.theonlinecitizen.com

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