Non Constituency Member of Parliament Daniel Goh questions HDB’s ban of Sigma lifts in Oct 2015. We republish his Facebook post in full.
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I opened my door this morning and found this screaming headline on ST (HDB bans firm Sigma from new lift projects after breakdowns).
First reaction: Heng ah, the lifts in my block still the old blue-box windowless kind, not upgraded to Sigma.
Then I got puzzled. The headline suggests that the ban is a recent thing. Not really, as the article says the ban was in place since October 2015.
October 2015 !?!?!?
1. Why did the ST report it in such present tenses and tones like it happened yesterday, 13 January 2017? So ST did some digging and found that Sigma was responsible for a lot of the breakdowns, good for ST! But why portray HDB in the present active tense in this case? A bit post-truth don’t you think?
2. The funny thing is that if this was reported earlier as the breakdowns got ugly last year, in June 2016, then HDB would have been seen to be on the ball, on the case on the lift problems. This is a matter of public interest, why only reveal the Sigma ban now when ST discovered the issue? Why not reassure the public then?
3. Mr Low Thia Khiang raised this issue in Parliament in April 2016, see my note here: http://bit.ly/2jtESBf. When Senior Minister of State Desmond Lee and Minister Lawrence Wong replied him, why did they not reveal that HDB has been proactively monitoring lift breakdowns and performance and had moved against Sigma?
4. And back to Puzzle 1, why did ST stop the investigative journalism there at HDB’s replies to their queries and not go further and ask about Puzzles 2 and 3? What’s happening?