It’s 2012 and here’s your very own atheistic pagan wishing you a happy and fruitful gregorian new year ahead. What a way it was to prepare for the start of a new year. MRT trains breaking down and trapping people. In accordance with my doom and gloom message, that since the mayan long count calendar runs out this year, it’s doomsday this year. MRT trains breaking down is only the beginning. The first of the thirteen signs.
This is the OSI reference model for data communications. Surprisingly, you can apply the model to alot of other things. Or we could look at other things as a data communication organism (this is mind boggling).
We could look at the MRT failure as a mechanical fault occuring in the physical layer. Or it could be higher up in the data link layer. Inefficiency in communication through a common langauge, as some claimed.
But could the root of the root of the problem be much higher up? Is our beloved Mr Lui, transport minister, to be held accountable? There is some discontinuity here though. The MRT is managed by SMRT, a private corporation. So.. how can this whole thing be linked to Mr Lui?
First of all, we must ask what exactly is the job of a transport minister. Is it to have his/her picture taken and splashed across the newspapers for taking the public transport two or three times in a year (that must be way much more frequent than what most ministers do)? Or be one of the first few to say something to the effect of, “Someone else is to take the blame. Let me get an independent auditor to straighten out the whole thing. And of course, to find out who that someone else might be.”
The trains might be managed by a private corporation. But this mrt train thing is still a public transport. If we still have not grasped the gravity of the situation, let just say this: the public transport system is a critical component of the Singapore economy. The public transport is the responsibility of the governement. Our government chose to use private corporations to operate and manage our public transport system.
Are there no auditors? How can LTA let such a thing happen? Are there no maintenance? As another blogger pointed out, did maintenance schedules scale with the increase in frequency of trains which resulted from the the need to serve an increase in (increasing) population which was due to some policies which at this point of time i do not need to remind ourselves who we voted for in the elections. And the population did increase amd and will continue to increase regardless of the capacity of our infrastructure. And in this case, our transport system.
Some would say that we should not point fingers at the upper management right now. The most important thing is to make sure that the trains are working again. Sure.. go ahead, and let others point their fingers at the guys at the lower levels of the hierarchy.
I only hope that Singaporeans have a good enough memory to remember this (trains breaking down fiasco) when the next round of elections come again.
