SMRT’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Desmond Kuek was spotted in the stranger’s gallery of Parliament today, looking very stern and glum while parliament session was ongoing.

He attended today’s Parliamentary session as Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan spoke about the flooding incident. Chairman Seah Moon Ming and other members of the rail operator’s leadership were present too.

Here are 5 key takeaways which Khaw made in Parliament today.

1) Two groups of workers have been suspended

The first group is the maintenance team who were responsible for maintaining pumps and other facilities from Sembawang to Dhoby Ghaut stations. This includes Bishan station.

The six of them have been suspended – the manager, engineering supervisor and four other crew members. They are assisting SMRT with the investigation.

The other workers who are suspended were responsible for the pumps at Redhill, Kembangan, Lavender and Changi. These pumps were not in serviceable condition.

This group of workers include vice president of Building and Facilities Ng Tek Poo and six other managerial staff.

By publicly revealing the groups of workers who have been suspended, it is a signal that Singapore does not tolerate the culture of falsifying records.

2) SMRT management may receive a pay cut

There is a whole list of things which SMRT is doing to prevent the flooding incident from happening again. Apart from there, there is also a major reorg that’s underway at SMRT. This includes:

• Replacing Ng Tek Poo with Mr Siu Yow Wee who will report directly to the Chief Maintenance Officer
• Having monthly maintenance checks for flood protection systems (it used to be quarterly)
• Working closely with SCDF and PUB to have regular exercises to strengthen coordination
• Taipei Metro team invited to independent review of SMRT’s operations in terms of system management, engineering and maintenance
• Building stronger culture of accountability, ownership and open reporting in SMRT: Includes staff rotations and renewal, strengthening training of supervisors and aligning bonuses of senior supervisors to team performance and audit results
• SMRT Board will review pay of senior management (including CEO)

Singaporeans have been calling for SMRT management to receive a pay cut – their wish might actually come true.

3) Be prepared for line closures

Khaw said they have been improve rail reliability by replacing ageing assets, investing in engineering skills and exploiting technology for more effective maintenance.

This includes using real-time condition monitoring and data analytics to track maintenance logs, detect and rectify potential faults before they happen.

Our train reliability improved from 133,000 train-km in 2015 to 425,000 train-km this year. But commuters do not feel it because of the change in signalling systems and the flooding incident which was preventable.

Singaporeans can expect more major disruptions because our North-South and East-West lines are being renewed while the lines are still operating.

However, be prepared for line closures because it may happen when SMRT needs many more extended engineering hours to work on the outstanding asset replacement programmes.

If there are line closures, it will inconvenience commuters but it also means that SMRT has more time to work on the trains.

Will line closures lead to lesser major disruptions in future? We’ll see.

4) SMRT chairman to turn things around

Khaw is confident that the new SMRT chairman can turn things around but he did not mention Kuek.

“I am confident that the new SMRT Chairman will be able to turnaround the company, and that we can catch up with the best metros in the world in terms of service reliability.”

He was also certain of SMRT Chairman’s “sincere efforts” to change SMRT’s deep-seated cultural issues.

“I am certain of the new SMRT Chairman’s determination and sincere efforts to transform the culture of SMRT as a whole. With the support of management and workers across the organisation, I have faith that he will succeed.”

5) Low Thia Khiang and Khaw cross swords

Workers’ Party’s secretary-general Low Thia Khiang said SMRT is a profit-seeking entity of the government and there will be no check and balances as LTA, MOT and SMRT are working together as a team.

Here are some notable points which Khaw made to rebut Low and even reminded everyone about Low’s town council troubles.

On how SMRT is not making money for Government:

“There are easier ways to make money. You don’t have to use SMRT to make money.”

On the need to have financial discipline while providing public services:

“Making money is not your objective, but you must not lose money. There must be financial discipline. Cannot just anyhow go and spend money, buy this, buy that, gold plate everything -and then, of course, you can have a marvellous operation and so on, but at great cost to who? It’ll be to the taxpayers.”

On how it’s possible to work as one team and still have checks and balances:

“So that I think yeah it may sound to him as schizo(phrenic), but we are quite clear in our mind and it can be done.”