Give affected passengers free rides: TOC
Socio-political blog The Online Citizen (TOC) has demanded that SMRT give passengers affected by the train disruptions this week free rides for a whole month.
TOC listed this demand in addition to two others at "Give Up Your Seat", a gathering at the Speakers' Corner on Saturday afternoon.
Interim chief editor of TOC, Ravi Philemon, told the crowd of approximately 80 that in light of SMRT's recent train faults, TOC is making three demands.
The first is for the transport operator to offer free rides to all passengers who were affected by the train disruptions over past week.
Philemon added that the Public Transport Council should remove the one per cent fare increase which was implemented on 1 August this year. Furthermore, fare increases should be pegged to an increase in service standards.
The second demand was made to SMRT to give people a full record of its train maintenance costs. He said that SMRT should be more transparent in revealing how much it spends in maintaining its trains for the safety of passengers.
The final demand was that someone should be made responsible for the recent outages. Not surprisingly, Philemon said that SMRT chief executive Saw Phaik Hwa should resign.
Former Workers' Party treasurer Eric Tan, who also spoke at the rally, said, "This (the train disruptions) is a failure in management, and a sign of complacency. The CEO should resign and take responsibility for what has happened."
The Straits Times (ST) wrote that Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew, who spoke to reporters at Changi Airport on Friday night, said, "I don't see this as a typical service lapse. This is a very, very serious disruption and better take heed, learn the lessons, improve on the systems.
"Therefore, I've told SMRT chairman Koh Yong Guan when I spoke to him that I hold the board and the management team responsible for making it right," the paper quoted Lui.
In a press conference on Saturday afternoon, Lui said that there were signs of improvement over how SMRT handled the Saturday disruption, as compared to the one on Thursday, reported Channel NewsAsia (CNA).
The same media firm reported that Lui thought that the signages were sufficient for affected commuters and the staff were helpful in giving information on alternative transport options.
The Minister also announced that the North-South and East-West lines will start at a later time on Sunday -- 10am instead of 5:30am -- to allow for checks on the trains and tracks, said CNA.
