MRT incident: Shanmugam confident Boon Wan 'will sort things out'

SINGAPORE: Singapore's Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam is confident his cabinet colleague, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan "will sort things out", in regard to SMRT Corporation's train collision incident on Wednesday morning.
"He went into MOT (Ministry of Transport) in October 2015. Since then there have been significant improvements, building on the good work of his predecessor, Min (Minister) Lui Tuck Yew. Of special note, Min Khaw has moved to strengthen the engineering teams," he wrote in his Facebook on late Wednesday.
Shanmugam noted that from a public perspective, all that hard work, good work, has been affected by the recent serious incidents.
Besides yesterday's incident, an MRT tunnel flooding incident had occurred along the North-South Line, disrupting train services for about 20 hours on Oct 7 and 8.
The minister recalled that in 2011, Khaw volunteered to go to the Ministry of National Development (MND), to deal with the housing issues.

I remember him telling me : "Housing is the government's signature success. And how can we let that drift." So he asked to go to MND, and within four years, got the job done, wrote Shanmugam.
In 2015, meanwhile, Shanmugam said Khaw was asked if he could go to MOT.
"I remember him saying to us, his colleagues : In 2011, I volunteered to go to MND. Now I am not volunteering. But I will go where I am needed," he wrote further.
Shanmugam noted that it has been a tough two years for Khaw but he has every confidence that his colleague "will deal with the challenges".
According to Shanmugam, Khaw has set a new target, an MKBF (Mean Kilometres Between Failure) of 1,000,000 train-km by 2020.

"Very ambitious. But I believe he will be able to achieve it," said Shanmugam.
Khaw had yesterday apologised to commuters for the incident in which 29 people were injured including two SMRT staff.
"It's an awful day," said Khaw.
A total of 517 passengers were on the train travelling at 16km/hour when it collided with a stationary train at Joo Koon station of East-West Line. — Bernama