You know times are tough for SMRT and its beleaguered CEO Desmond Kuek.

But you know times are especially tough when the public transport operator has to resort to defending its CEO on Facebook against an unsubstantiated accusation levelled against him that was originally posted on an anonymous forum.

Defensive Facebook post

This is the official SMRT Facebook page's post put up on Nov. 16, 2017 at 10.01pm -- with exclamation mark and all:

The original accusation

The original accusation mentioned in the SMRT Facebook post is unsubstantiated and was making the rounds on forums.

It can be traced to this thread on the HardwareZone forum, which was posted a day ago on Nov. 15, when the Joo Koon MRT station collision occurred.

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What the accusation was about

The gist of the unsubstantiated accusation is that night shift staff in charge of maintenance of tracks at SMRT have been cut over the years.

The practice of getting rid of the SMRT night shift staff started when the previous CEO Saw Phaik Hwa allegedly cut 25 percent of the crew, and Kuek subsequently cut another 50 percent.

The implication is that only one-third of the original staff strength was retained.

SMRT says not true

In the Facebook post, SMRT revealed that this is not true.

It said the Permanent Way (PWAY) team that looks after track and track-side infrastructure almost doubled under SMRT CEO Desmond Kuek’s tenure.

It grew from 206 staff in Dec. 31, 2010 to 395 staff in Sept. 30 this year.

The number of night shift workers had in fact increased by 65 percent as more permanent night shift staff have been added to the North-South and East-West Lines in the same period.

The number of personnel carrying out maintenance work is even more when external contract workers are added, the post said.

Reactions

The reactions from the public towards the post were obviously unsympathetic and unimpressed, with some even calling out the professionalism of this sort of communication strategy: