The following is a letter by one of our readers, Mr Tan CM.
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Mr Lee Kuan Yew said in 1984, “Everything works, whether it’s water, electricity, gas, telephones, telexes, it just has to work. If it doesn’t work, I want to know why, and if I am not satisfied, and I often was not, the chief goes, and I have to find another chief. Firing the chief is very easy.”
Today nothing works after a decade of decline under this 3G (third generation) PAP leadership.
This morning, the systems in nine of our eighteen polyclinics went down extensively (link: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/9-polyclinics-in-singapore-experience-it-system-disruptions-on-monday-morning). Patients were turned away in large numbers and those more critical cases remaining had to wait for prolonged hours, going on manual mode without records of ailment history and medication to refer back to.
These days, you get $38K annual increment even when the entire SMRT line crawls to a halt and even when two died and one nearly died in workplace safety lapses.
That’s the difference between the 1G, 2G PAP, the giants of the past and the midgets we have today.
In the polyclinic fiasco of this morning, the questions one has to ask is:
- Who did the polyclinics’ IT systems?
- Was it outsourced?
- What kind of qualifications those IT programmers who did the system have?