Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has asked for local service providers such as Mediacorp, Singtel and the like to help keep elderly people entertained with nostalgic shows.
In a Facebook post yesterday (April 15), ESM Goh wrote: “My heart goes out to the elderly Singaporeans cooped up at home.
He added that many elderly people are not tech-savvy, cannot connect with friends on smart devices, and do not read much.
“I wonder if Mediacorp, SingTel or Starhub can screen nostalgic local TV productions like the classic comedy pair of Wang Sa and Yeh Fong to ignite them”, he wrote.
ESM Goh added: “I used to enjoy a good laugh watching these shows. Older people are happiest when they recall their good old younger days”.
StarHub users across Singapore reported issues with their Internet service on Wednesday (Apr 15), with frustrated customers taking to social media to complain of an outage, CNA reported.
The disruption began at about 11 am, according to posts on Twitter and on StarHub’s Facebook page.
In its latest update at 5.30 pm, the telco said that the affected fibre broadband services are being “progressively restored”, adding that there is no evidence pointing to a cyber attack.
Throughout the day, users were still reporting outages in the afternoon, with many complaining about being unable to work from home amid the COVID-19 circuit breaker measures.
In response to ESM’s post, Mediacorp responded with the following: “Thanks for the suggestion ESM. It is indeed hard for our elderly, and Mediacorp is here to keep them company with ease on TV and radio. We have put together a whole range of new programmes for this period, for example, keep fit exercise sessions for seniors. Coincidentally, we are right in the midst of pulling together a Wang Sha Yeh Fong special and this will be available on Channel 8 soon! Meanwhile, fans looking for more local shows can catch them every Tuesday from 9.30pm on Channel 5.”
Similarly, StarHub also apologised for the service disruption. In a media statement on Apr 16, they wrote: “StarHub apologises unreservedly for the inconvenience caused by the intermittent disruption of home broadband services to some of its customers on 15 April 2020. Network resilience and quality are matters StarHub takes seriously, especially with more people working and studying from home during the nationwide circuit breaker. During the disruption, StarHub’s top priority was to restore services swiftly for affected customers.
In addition to the apology, StarHub will offer affected customers a one-time 20% rebate on their Home Broadband monthly fee, which is equivalent to six days of free home WiFi service. A dedicated website will be made available for affected customers to register for the rebate. Details will be announced to customers soon.” /TISG