The SMRT corporate communications department must be racking up those overtime hours.

The communications team has to provide constant updates on the aftermath of the Joo Koon MRT collision and then deal with informing the public about ongoing disruptions and delays on the other train lines.

And more astonishingly, they even had to defend their CEO Desmond Kuek on Facebook against unsubstantiated accusations floating online about him firing half of SMRT maintenance staff.

But it appears that was not the only rumour floating around on the Internet that could use some debunking.

Reddit

On Nov. 16, at about 11pm, someone who claimed to work for SMRT posted a supposedly insider tell-all rant on Reddit Singapore forum.

The anonymous user, going by the moniker u/mrtguy, began by claiming that he worked as a station manager for SMRT, part of the ground staff.

But he was not able to provide any proof of his affiliation to or employment by SMRT, stating that he feared his identity will be revealed and there would be repercussions.

As a rule-of-thumb for Reddit, anyone who does a Ask Me Anything segment on the forum will provide some form of proof as verification of identity.

With that convenient disclaimer put out, he launched into a tale of the real reasons behind SMRT's recent failures.

And to make things interesting, he pointed the finger of blame not at the senior management, but the "old-timers" at SMRT.

[related_story]

This is the lengthy post in full:

Here is a summary of what was written:

• SMRT's standard operating procedure is long, boring and repetitive, so people cut corners while doing maintenance work.
• SMRT ground staff are not afraid of repercussions because blame is usually directed at senior management.
• Even if the staff do get punished, they can turn to social media to garner sympathy and put more pressure on senior management.
• SMRT have to hire foreigners because Singaporeans don't want to join SMRT, given its bad reputation.

Carrying on the conversation, the SMRT insider then answered questions on Reddit in response to questions posed by other users.

Reactions

The reactions to such a juicy thread were rather mixed. Some lauded the guy for his "bravery":

While others were sceptical:

Before more people could voice their opinions, the original post was suddenly deleted at about 12.30am on Nov. 17:

Deletion

Why was the thread deleted? On Reddit, a [deleted] thread indicates that the original poster took down the original post himself, while a [removed] thread indicates that the moderators or administrators were responsible.

So, it appears it was the original poster's decision.

Possible reasons?

Perhaps the guy got spooked at the attention he was receiving and got cold feet.

Perhaps SMRT themselves got wind of the thread, and ordered someone who might know the guy to order him to take it down.

Or maybe, this is part of an ops to redistribute blame more evenly between management and ground staff to reflect or deflect from the real problems in SMRT.

Who knows?

Possible clues

One clue is that u/mrtguy is not a throwaway account, in other words, someone who made a new account on Reddit just to post a single rant.

A look at his profile reveals that he has been a Redditor for about five months and he has previously posted about SMRT matters before.

Still, there's no way to substantiate his claims, as he hasn't provided any proof that he's actually working as a station manager for SMRT.

So, we're left in the dark as to why he deleted his post.

Still, if the SMRT communications team is so free to address unsubstantiated accusations, they might like to address this one too.

By, perhaps, agreeing how true it is for a change.

Top image from All About Lean and Mei Anne's Facebook page