Khaw: Aside from the flooding incident and MRT collision, we are “actually making good progress”

Social media is rife with fresh citicism over Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan’s comments last night that aside from the flooding incident and MRT collision, “we were making good progress”:

“I gave myself 4 years. We are halfway through. If not for (the Joo Koon collision) as well as the flooding incident, we were actually making good progress, as PM Lee described before”

The Minister was referring to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s comments on the public train transport here, while he was speaking at the PAP Convention last Sunday.

Pointing to the train collision at Joo Koon station earlier this week that caused at least 36 people to sustain injuries and the MRT tunnel flooding incident last month that caused a 20-hour service disruption, PM Lee said: “We have made progress, but there have been setbacks.”

Commenting that the government’s standards must have dropped if this is considered “good progress,” netizens trolled Khaw mercilessly:

The Transport Minister’s comments came after a statement released by SMRT and LTA yesterday that 17 East-West Line (EWL) MRT stations and 2 North-South Line (NSL) MRT stations will be fully closed on Dec 10 and Dec 17 and that will close earlier on Fridays and Saturdays (11pm) and open later on Saturdays and Sundays (8am).

This is to allow for extended engineering hours, according to the statement.