SMRT chairman's 'overmaintenance' comment 'selectively quoted' in misleading social media posts: Chee Hong Tat

Following his remarks in June 2023, that "We don't want over maintenance", SMRT's chairman Seah Moon Ming clarified with LTA that SMRT did not reduce its spending over the past few years, Minister for Transport Chee Hong Tat said in parliament on Oct. 15.

Seah's main point, Chee explained, was about striking a balance between achieving high reliability standards and incurring high maintenance costs to achieve what he described as optimal maintenance.

The minister was responding to a question by Member of Parliament (MP) Saktiandi Supaat about comments on social media that claimed the recent disruption to the East-West Line (EWL) occurred because Seah claimed SMRT did not want "overmaintenance."

Social media posts are misleading, do not reflect full context of story

Chee pointed out that such social media posts can be misleading as they selectively quote certain comments rather than reflect the full context.

The minister clarified that the chairman had said in 2023 that SMRT would "never want to undermaintain" because he wanted to avoid the reliability issues of the past.

The full quote from Seah, in a wide-ranging interview with The Straits Times, was:

“We never want to undermaintain because in the past, it was an issue. But neither do we want to do overmaintenance.”

Chee said that he and his LTA colleagues are cognisant of Seah's perspective and agree with his "sensible and balanced approach".

MRT reliability has improved greatly since 2012

Chee said:

'There are indeed important trade offs that we need to look at between achieving high reliability standards while keeping the overall maintenance costs sustainable."

The Mean Kilometres Between Failure (MKBF) for the MRT network was 67,000 train kilometers in 2012, he noted.

The government has since achieved its MKBF target of 1,000,003km in 2019 and maintained that figure for all of the MRT lines.

With regard to the East-West Line, its MKBF was 60,000 train kilometres in 2012.

It achieved the one million MKBF target in 2019, which has maintained this even after accounting for the serious disruption in late September of this year.

"So with the one million MKBF target in place, SMRT spending on maintenance for the north, south and east, west lines has remained steady over the past few years," Chee pointed out.

In addition, SMRT has invested in building up its engineering and technical capabilities under Seah's chairmanship and has embarked on initiatives using its own resources to further improve rail reliability.

SAF should not be activated for such incidents

Chee also responded to MP Hany Soh's question about whether the SAF should be mobilised for such "uncommon" incidents where "millions of commuters" are affected.

Soh noted that the recent disruption to the East-West Line appeared to be a national crisis that required multiple stakeholders to come together and ask if it was an "appropriate situation" to activate the SAF.

He replied that while he has no doubt that the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) stands ready to help in the event of a crisis, such as an MRT breakdown, the government should not take the SAF away from its primary duty of defending the country unless it is really necessary.

If the crisis is something that the government can still cope with within the transport ecosystem, the government should try to do that first, as there are staff and officers who have gone through regular rehearsals and exercises to prepare for such scenarios, Chee replied.

Such staff are also more familiar with the operating environment.

"They are also more able to see what is the best way to respond to help commuters," he added.

While the government is not keen to activate the SAF, the minister said he is confident that the SAF will be there to support other government agencies for the benefit of Singapore.

With regard to the EWL disruption, Chee said:

"I think it was the correct judgement call that we didn't have to activate the SAF for this. We were still able to assist commuters to complete their journey."

Top left photo via Chee Hong Tat/Facebook, right photo via SMRT