You just have to appear to be doing something

[BuiKia]

Cable ties are better than doing nothing: Saw

SINGAPORE - Former SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa has defended and clarified some of her statements made in her appearance on May 10 at the recent Committee of Inquiry investigating December's MRT breakdowns.

Ms Saw made the clarifications in an online post on her personal blog on Saturday, June 1.

The two statements were published in the Straits Times on May 11.

The first was made be Lim Mong King, a professor at the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University who had on May 10 said, "You knew the risks, and you didn't do enough. You implemented cable ties."

This was reportedly in response to Ms Saw saying that SMRT management was not aware of the seriousness of the sagging of the third rails in 2010 and 2006 because the dropped claws were reinstated then.

Ms Saw said that rail claws have in fact been dropping since the 1980s and that it was the "engineering contractor of the system" that recommended cable ties.

This recommendation was made and accepted by MRT Corporation of those days, she said.

"New claw designs were developed over the years for new systems. In fact in building new line and extensions, LTA has used the much more secure, new positive lock claw system in the past 10 years. In this last 10 years, there has never been consideration in changing the claw system holding up the 3rd rail by either LTA or SMRT," she continued.

She added that some experts continued to disagree on the necessity of changing all the claws to the new system even after December's incidents.

"Certainly I had no part to play in technical decisions of claws and cable ties before December. After the December incidents, I had agreed with the head of trains to quickly tie the 3rd rail extensively with cable ties and to use more heavy-duty ones. That was because there was nothing more we could do in the short term as it would take years to change all claws to new generation ones.

"Cable ties are better than doing nothing! (means must wayang when dunno what to do) We had quickly engaged contractors to complete tying the whole line over several nights."

In a second article published on the same day, the paper reported that when Ms Saw was asked if she had cut staff strength, she said "no", but sometimes "when there's attrition, we did not replace".

Ms Saw clarified the statement "when there's attrition, we did not replace". She said that the comment was made at the end of a long exchange on manpower cost increases over the years.

"In answering Prof Lim's query that although manpower costs had increased, it was not at the same rate as mileage cost increase. My answer was that train management team was able to keep manpower cost increases more modest(means by giving only modesr increase of salary to the staff), due to many productivity initiatives, such as regrouping teams, encouraging multi-tasking etc," she wrote.

"My ending comment was in reference to the fact that when we increased productivity, we had therefore not needed to replace staff when there was attrition."

Ms Saw claims that the statement without context gives the impression that she "ordered for non-replacement of staff who had resigned to cut costs and thus leading to shortage of manpower, resulting in poor maintenance etc".

In closing her blog post, Ms Saw wrote that "such foolish decisions were never taken by me personally nor anyone on the team".

She added that they have instead always emphasised on productivity and finding innovative ways to achieve it.

Ms Saw also praised SMRT employees as her "everyday heroes" and believes she can finally say farewell after clarifying her comments made at the committee of inquiry.

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