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Member of Parliament Mr Seng Han Thong of Ang Mo Kio GRC has apologised for comments he made on a TV programme where he said that SMRT staff spoke broken English. During the TV programme, he said: "I noticed that the PR (SMRT public relations officer) ...
Member of Parliament Mr Seng Han Thong of Ang Mo Kio GRC has apologised for comments he made on a TV programme where he said that SMRT staff spoke broken English.
During the TV programme, he said: "I noticed that the PR (SMRT public relations officer) mentioned that some of the (SMRT) staff, because they are Malay, they are Indian, they can't converse in English well enough, so that also deters them, but I think we accept broken English."
"In my interview with blogtv.sg, I made a regrettable mistake in my language, which may be misconstrued as me saying that people speak bad English because of their ethnicity. I sincerely apologise to all Singaporeans, who have been offended by this error.
"Singaporeans of all ethnicities and backgrounds speak varying standards of English. My own Chinese-educated background gives me a special empathy for the non-English-speaking sections of our society. We should all be tolerant of people of different standards of linguistic ability.
"The point I was trying to make is that this should not prevent people from trying to communicate, especially in times of emergency.
"The remark was made in the context of a larger discussion about how we could better and faster improve the current problems we're facing with our mass rapid transport system. Let us once again focus our minds and our public discussion on this issue."
SMRT claimed that they never highlight any ethnicity issue regarding bad English standards but this MP 'interpreted' SMRT's PR statements to mean they're referring to Malays & Indians. So how he came to this conclusion is big fat question mark. This is the kind of 'calibre' MPs PAP are gloating abt. A Screw-up commenting over other ppl's screw-ups.