Through the Public Transport Council, corrupted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has ordered the legal maximum increase in public transport fares of 4.3%, greatly benefiting his wife Ho Ching’s Temasek Holdings in the process. The increase will see every single trip increase by 6 cents, with the average commuter expected to pay S$50 extra a year.
Using a new formula that requires commuters to pay for new transport infrastructures, the corrupted Singapore dictatorship abandoned an old fare formula that should have seen the prices go down by 4% instead of an increase.
The chairman of the Singapore government’s transport council PTC, Richard Magnus, calls the increase “necessary” and “affordable”:
“We had to balance between the rising costs in public transport, as well as fare affordability on the part of our commuters. The increase is necessary in a rising cost environment and as the public transport fare review formula took into account a new component called the network capacity factor (NCF).”
The increases is expected to continue next year in 2019, as PTC sang about how poor the two Temasek Holdings-owned companies SBS Transit and SMRT are. The PAP crony, Richard Magnus, then started lying about SMRT and SBS Transit reporting “significant losses” from providing public transport to Singaporeans.
This is however not true, as SBS Transit reported 57.7% increase in net profit just in August 2018. Although SMRT reported its first annual losses of S$86 million in July 2018, it made S$26 million in profits and S$91 million in the preceding years. A check with SMRT’s balance sheet revealed that the losses came because of government fines and frequent train breakdown incidents. Under a new government public transport contracting model, SMRT and SBS Transit had their profits ensured as they need only handle the lucrative part of the business – manpower and transport operation services, while the loss-incurring assets are paid for using taxes, insuring the two Temasek Holdings-owned companies from losses.
Temasek Holdings, the parent companies of SMRT and SBS Transit, is currently heavily laden in debt owing over S$49 million. Its CEO, Ho Ching, who is also the Prime Minister’s wife, recently had to borrow S$600 million from the public through bond issuance.
PTC revealed that SMRT and SBS Transit has both applied for the legal maximum of 4.3% increase, which they allowed without questions.
Earlier in the evening, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan went melodramatic on Facebook saying he is having a “difficult balancing job”. The S$1.1 million-a-year minister then started singing praises about the PTC:
“PTC comprises a number of wise men and women, from different background. I know them to be reasonable and balanced.“