How many Singapore MRT bosses does it take to fix a broken culture?
If metro systems were like football, Hong Kong is premier league but Singapore is fighting relegation and its manager is heading for an early bath
Like the dreaded vote of confidence handed down to an embattled football club manager just before a sacking, Desmond Kuek, the under-fire chief executive of Singapore’s metro operator SMRT, received uncannily reassuring words from his boss this week.
“He wasn’t parachuted in or asked to go and fix this. He volunteered for this job,” transport minister Khaw Boon Wan said of Kuek, a retired three-star general, as he briefed parliament on Tuesday about the maintenance lapses that led to a large-scale breakdown on October 7.
The episode – one of the worst disruptions in the Singaporean metro network’s 30-year history – has brought into focus a crisis at SMRT as it struggles to put an end to repeated delays and breakdowns.
Singapore’s MRT network was once regarded one of Asia’s best, alongside Hong Kong’s MTR and the Taipei Metro, but its image has suffered in recent years because of issues with reliability.
“As the former chief of defence, I know his heart is in the right place,” Khaw said, as Kuek and other SMRT head honchos sat grim-faced in the legislature’s public gallery.
The transport minister did not give any indication that he wanted Kuek gone, but singled out the company’s newly installed chairman Seah Moon Ming as the man who should be given “time and space” to transform the company’s culture.