Letter to the Editor | Young people should give priority seats to elderly folks, pregnant women, and children

Dear Editor,

I read with interest The Independent Singapore’s article, “Priority seating: Are elderly passengers automatically entitled to public transportation seats?” (March 16).

Everyone will experience the life process of birth, old age, illness, and death. Anyway, this is an ironclad law of nature.

As a person ages, his body becomes weak, and his movements are slow and clumsy. His mind becomes less alert, and his vision and hearing become poor.

In this situation, when elderly folks take the subway and find no priority seats, they are forced to stand until they get off the train. This is so inconvenient and difficult.

This is especially true during peak commuting hours when the crowds are large. If there is a collision or squeeze, these elderly folks will stumble around.

However, some elderly people are physically and mentally fit and healthy and may not require priority seating.

There is a famous Chinese proverb: “Honour the elderly and the young in other families as we honour those in our own”.

Thus, with the popularization of education in our country, many young people have received good and high-quality higher education, so they should be sensible and civilized.

When they take the subway, they should try not to occupy the priority seats that are duly labelled; they should try to give these priority seats to underprivileged personnel or personnel with physical disabilities, elderly folks, pregnant women, and children.

Whenever I take the subway or MRT train, I have also noticed some young people who are very self-centred, undisciplined, and unsympathetic.

They occupy these priority seats and pretend to sleep or play with their mobile phones with their heads down. This is extremely typical selfish behaviour.

Our society should severely criticize and condemn these undesirable attitudes and behaviours.

Teo Kueh Liang

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of The Independent Singapore.

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