Sunday, 25 December 2011

Insing - Seng Han Thong

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MP clears the air regarding comments on transport workers

Channel NewsAsia
inSing.com - 23 hrs 19 mins ago
SINGAPORE: Member of Parliament for Ang Mo Kio GRC, Seng Han Thong, has sought to allay concerns and clear the air with transport workers over his comments in a Channel NewsAsia programme, BlogTV.
Mr Seng, who is Executive Secretary of the National Transport Workers' Union (NTWU), said in the programme, he expressed his view that SMRT needs to improve on the public communications during an emergency.
He said he recalled hearing on the radio a view that cited the workers' difficulty in English as a reason for the communication problems at the MRT stations.
Mr Seng said he disagreed, adding that broken English should be acceptable.
He said unfortunately, in trying to defend the workers, he made the mistake of only mentioning "Malay" and "Indian" workers, when the original quote in the radio interview had cited MRT staff of different races - "Malay, Chinese, or Indians or any other race".
Mr Seng said his wish to defend the workers was further taken out of context and misconstrued by The Online Citizen.
He said the headline, "MP Seng Han Thong: SMRT's unpreparedness also due to Malay and Indian staffs (sic) English language inefficiency", made it look like he was blaming any unpreparedness during a emergency on their language inefficiency.
Mr Seng said he understands that this episode has hurt the feelings of the workers, as well as other Singaporeans, and apologised to them for this misquotation.
Mr Seng, who shared these views in a Facebook post on Saturday, stressed that he never had any intention to belittle or push the blame of the recent MRT breakdown to the workers of SMRT.
He said that having been executive secretary of NTWU for many years, he is well aware that the workers are competent in communicating with the public in English.
In the BlogTV interview, he said he tried to make the point that "not-so-perfect English" should not prevent them from communicating effectively with the public, especially in times of emergencies.
Mr Seng said these are challenging times for the transport workers and for SMRT and he is confident that they will rise to the occasion and work with the management to restore public confidence in the train system.
He noted that they have had to work extra hard to repair and maintain the system during this period.
He said their exemplary performance is the pride of NTWU and will be duly recognised by the Singapore public.
Noting that workers in the frontline faced the stress and pressure from commuters as they tried their best to resume train services, he thanked them for their service to the travelling public.

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