Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan made himself a national joke yesterday (Sep 26) by hiring 8 religious leaders to “pray” for the new Downtown train line. The new train line is due to open next month (Oct 21) and the PAP Minister believes their prayers would prevent any train disruption.
“We invited religious leaders from the Inter-Religious Organisation, Singapore to have a preview of two stations and also to try out a stretch of DTL3. They were gracious and took the opportunity to offer their prayers for our workers and commuters.”
The move is viewed as ludicrous by most Singaporeans, with many slamming the Minister for not taking his work seriously. Some also mocked the Singapore Transport Minister for being superstitious behaving like Malaysia’s “coconut bomoh preacher”, who was hired when a passenger plane went missing in 2014.
Singapore’s train system has been seeing disruptions as frequent as weekly, but the Transport Minister claimed otherwise. In his Parliament speech earlier this month, Minister Khaw Boon Wan said train reliability is improving and that he needs 7 years to fix the train faults. The Transport Minister has also earlier blamed “politics” for the faulty rail design at Bukit Panjang LRT, and also the media for negatively reporting on train breakdowns.