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More accountability needed in rail maintenance: Opposition

SINGAPORE — Opposition political parties have weighed in on the unprecedented breakdown of two MRT lines on Tuesday evening (July 7), questioning whether the problems that had led to a spate of massive breakdowns in 2011 have been adequately acted upon.

A SMRT staff advises a commuter at Boon Lay MRT station after train service on the North South East West Lines (NSEWL) was disrupted due to a power fault on 7 Jul 2015. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong/TODAY

A SMRT staff advises a commuter at Boon Lay MRT station after train service on the North South East West Lines (NSEWL) was disrupted due to a power fault on 7 Jul 2015. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong/TODAY

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SINGAPORE — Opposition political parties have weighed in on the unprecedented breakdown of two MRT lines on Tuesday evening (July 7), questioning whether the problems that had led to a spate of massive breakdowns in 2011 have been adequately acted upon.

The Workers’ Party (WP) said it is “deeply worried” over the three-hour outage, and called on the authorities to enforce a more rigorous maintenance on the rail network. 

“The latest breakdown comes on the heels of repeated assurances by both SMRT and the authorities about the improved reliability of our transport system,” the party said in a statement today (July 9), and noted that the number of significant train delays so far this year has reached two-thirds that of the record high of 12 last year. “This is despite billions of dollars of government funds being pumped into improving the existing MRT infrastructure since 2011.”

The WP asked for concrete targets to be set for key performance indicators such as the number of unscheduled train withdrawals per 100,000 train kilometres and the number of service delays exceeding 30 minutes. These targets should be disclosed to the public, it added.

Singapore People’s Party member Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss also called for SMRT and Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew to provide “a full and frank account” of the steps that have been taken to implement the recommendations by the Committee of Inquiry (COI) that looked into the 2011 disruptions.

Until the COI’s recommended actions have been fully implemented and Tuesday’s breakdown properly accounted for, SMRT chief executive Desmond Kuek’s pay should be frozen, and fares should not be raised, she said. “I understand that systemic infrastructural faults take time to rectify. But what I cannot accept, and Singaporeans should not be asked to accept, is the complete lack of accountability of our public transport operators and those who lead them.”

In a statement posted online yesterday, the Reform Party said a COI should be convened to investigate the latest breakdown — Mr Lui had said on the same day this was unnecessary. Its secretary-general Kenneth Jeyaretnam also called for an independent regulator to oversee rail service standards.

Meanwhile, the Singapore Democratic Party said Mr Lui had not ruled out the possibility of passenger overload of the track system being the cause of repeated breakdowns. “Given such a scenario, shouldn’t the Government re-examine its policy of bringing in even more foreigners into the country to live and work?” it asked.

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