My Take | Hong Kong's MTR shows bad crisis management over stray dog

The unfortunate MTR stray dog incident has become a full-blown crisis.

Assuming that staff on the ground did not do their job humanely, protesters used the full might of social media and street protests to demonise MTR staff and management.

Memorials and an online petition attracting tens of thousands of signatures condemned the MTR for not stopping the cross-border train which killed the animal. OK, that's going a bit overboard but their criticism is not without reason.

Not every problem and situation staff face can be covered by bureaucratic guidelines. Intelligent and well-trained MTR staff on the ground sometimes need to take the initiative to handle a situation satisfactorily.

The outcry forced senior managers such as MTR operations director Dr Jacob Kam Chak-pui to make a public apology. This in turn draws another round of complaints from MTR staff unions, whose leaders say managers essentially throw them to the wolves when they should have expressed support to boost staff morale.

They say if staff were not given guidelines, they could not be faulted. Really? The fault must lie with management which has failed to provide them when such incidents have happened before.