Wake up your ideas

Our Transport Minister, Mr Lui Tuck Yew, appears to be a regular public transport commuter nowadays, especially when the train breaks down. In the most recent incident, Minister Lui took the trouble to be almost everywhere to ensure that people's lives are not too inconvenienced unnecessarily. He may be the Transport Minister, but it appears that he also runs the transport operations. He may as well be the CEO of SBSTransit. Which is more than we can say about the actual CEO. Well, its unfair for me to say that. A press conference was called towards the END of the day where the actual CEO, Mr Gan Juay Kiat, apologised for the breakdown.

By his actions of late, Mr Lui has set the bar to almost impossible heights for our transport operators' senior management. The head honchos of these transport operators would probably prefer that he kept a lower profile and said less. Heck they probably wished he never took their trains. But really, the only way they can have this wish fulfilled is for the transport operators to do their jobs in the first place. Roster for thorough maintenance of both the trains and the tracks. Have zero tolerance for failure so that no apologies become necessary and the rest of us can go about our lives doing what the government tells us to do: increasing our productivity. Above all, be paranoid. Always imagine that something will go wrong. Check everything. Check them again. No, check it a third time. Sure this will cost more, but as it is, breakdowns also cost the transport operators not only monetarily, but more so its reputation and trustworthiness. Well, you say these are really not important given the fact that the transport operators are monopolies. Whether you like them or not, you have to take their trains to work. So who gets busted if we cannot bust the commercial operators? The politicians, of course!

I hope the civil servants, especially the big shots in the LTA, realise that their behinds are being shield by Chief Lui. As they say in the army, they had better 'wake up their ideas' and not have their boss run around on their behalf all the time. No shame ahh? Well you say the boss wants to run around, so what can you do? Simple, make sure these major breakdowns and disruptions don't happen! As Andy Grove famously wrote, ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVES.