SMRT's managing director of trains Lee Ling Wee appeared on Channel 5's Talking Point on July 14, 2015, to talk about the most massive train disruption in Singapore's history that occurred a week earlier on July 7.

Accompanied by the Land Transport Authority's (LTA) chief executive Chew Men Leong and Professor Lee Der Horng, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore, Lee admitted SMRT was not able to handle last week's massive train disruption on its own.

Lee said:

"One trainload is about 1,400, so we're talking about three to four trainloads of people descending onto the concourse and we were just not able to cope. This is a situation whereby I think SMRT just doesn't have the organic capacity to cope with this level of disruption. I think perhaps it's something that we need to take at the national level."

And this was despite deploying 700 staff on the night of the worst breakdown in Singapore's history where an estimated 250,000 commuters were affected.

Lee also suggested setting up a taskforce involving the LTA and other enforcement agencies.

The LTA chief, on the other hand, said they had mobilised whatever assets they could on the night, including buses from SBS Transit. The authority had also planned on calling on private bus operators if it had to, as back-up.

Absent from the programme was SMRT chief executive Desmond Kuek.

Who is Lee Ling Wee and why is he in the hot seat facing the public?

Lee was the one who made the crucial call to stop all train operations on the North-South and East-West lines on July 7, which was why he was on Talking Point explaining about what went wrong.

He was a military veteran. He spent 25 years in his previous career with the Republic of Singapore Air Force, where he headed the air engineering and logistics department.

The 49-year-old joined SMRT, a Temasek-owned listed company, in May 2013 to lead a new maintenance and engineering division for trains.

He was the most senior ex-military man among other military men hired then by former military man SMRT CEO Kuek to help get the beleaguered company back on track.

Lee held the rank of Military Expert 8, which is equivalent to a brigadier-general.

Related article:

The worst MRT breakdown in S’pore’s history occurred on SMRT’s 16th Annual General Meeting on 7/7/15

Top photo via Toggle

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