It is a verified fact that SMRT trains have been hit by a spate of service disruptions and delays during the course of their testing of a new signalling system. But Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan doesn’t seem to like the way mainstream media is covering the whole kerfuffle.
While delivering a speech at the Fourth Joint Forum on Infrastructure Maintenance — where Khaw was setting a new 2020 rail reliability target — the minister went off script and spewed fighting words against reporters… for doing their jobs. Criticizing media coverage for the “frightening figures” and headlines about SMRT’s re-signalling project on the North-South Line, he believes that reporters have “magnified the problem unfairly”.
“Even our main(stream) media have turned tabloid,” he said, even though we’re pretty sure the mainstream media’s just reporting objective facts and figures — it’s us non-mainstream publications that come up with the snarky comments, really.
“…I think they were being unfair to the teams — some of them are here — working their guts out, you know, on this re-signalling project,” he stated grimly.
“They think it is so easy, you know, just like holding a pen and writing a few articles… and you get the signalling done. I wish it was so simple. If it was so simple, they don’t need us. We can ask the reporters to run the train system,” he said. No laughs from the crowd were heard.
Is he not happy that the media refuses to be a mouthpiece for SMRT, and reporters should actually be writing about how things are fine and dandy despite multiple days of train service disruptions? Maybe. But hey, don’t fault us for simply reflecting the sentiments on the ground.
If the minister’s purpose was to rally the troops against the quote-unquote “unfair” media coverage, his comments clearly didn’t vibe with the audience he should be winning over instead: the commuters.
Ironically, it’s because of Khaw’s off-script slamming of the media that people have been distracted by the main crux of his speech — that the MRT is measured to be three times more reliable since he took over the Transport Minister job.
