SMRT Trains CEO Lee Ling Wee said that he found the “root cause” of signal faults and pinned the blame fully on the new signalling system supplier contractor. In his press release on SMRT website, he wrote:
“SMRT is working around the glitches while waiting for software fixes to be implemented by Thales… While the system supplier had experience working with other operators in the world, they are unable to simply replicate the well-oiled systems of Taipei, Hong Kong and London, and import those here.”
The SMRT CEO, a former Air Force brigadier general, claimed that he has discovered the “root causes” of the errors causing train breakdowns as frequent as twice a week. CEO Lee Ling Wee said new software patches will be required and he is solely waiting for the contractor.
The ruling party military crony who has zero prior knowledge of a rail network also made no mention of a deadline when the fault will be rectified. SMRT CEO Lee Ling Wee also did not explain why an untested system is being rolled out when the older signalling system is twice as reliable than the new one.
In May 2017, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and SMRT jointly called for a six month test completion deadline by November. However, LTA and SMRT posted an update today delaying the completion date further to Jan 2018.