Ng made the scapegoat for Nicol collapse

last SG · 2005-11-26T10:23:37+00:00

Too bad you whiners can't support Robert with reason and logic. I can take on the whole bunch of you on and swipe you.

robertteh SG

Minister should be the first person to answer for the negligence because such negligence can only end by minister setting a proper direction whether in major projects like MRT, Structural plans have to be approved by relevant departments as recommended by the Hotel New World Inquiry.

Why the minister did not practise due diligence in this instance and allow LTA to be exempted from or bypass stringent structural plans and calculations submissions required in any building works. He and all his LTA people have completely overlooked such plans and calculations submissions of the type mentioned in the Hotel New World Inquiry report because the developer in this case is LTA, a government department.

Subordinate like Ng does not have all the powers and authority to override minister or LTA who does not see the need to comply with structural plan and calculations submissions. So Ng has been made a scapegoat for higher-up.

I-like-flings(m) SG

just 2 letter - B S Mr. Green

Salman SG

Minister? Was the minister running the program? How constructive is Robert Teh?

meleagent SG

It can be argued that YCT was not in charge of the project itself but thats not the point. Hes the Minister for Transportation, the head honcho if anything is wrong, he should be the first one to raise him hands and admit mistakes.
Its obvious that this Ng was a suitable scapegoat. This whole fiasco reeks of the PAPpy dogs trying to cover their smelly arse.

I-like-flings(m) SG

why not u tell us first??? Mr. Green

laurence82 SG

Its diff from Japan, where their Minister or board of directors of a company would be the first to come out to apologise to the public.

It may not be their fault, but its their way of saying "I am ready to take responsibility for the incidents"

Look at Singapore gahmen culture...the lowest raking scapegoats are the first to be hung to pacify the public.

robertteh SG

That is precisely the reason why as an economy we are nowlagging behind in management excellence for so many years - constant NKF denials of problems and covering up of the top leaders of mistakes or errors.

Ecxentrique SG

In a case like this, the responsibility does not lie with the Minister as he is not the qualified person for the supervision of the works. To be a qualified person, I understand that you have to have the relevant qualifications like being a professional engineer and with the relevant degrees.

I believe Ng was with the LTA at the time of the incident and somehow the buck had to stop there since he is solely responsible for the works there. The due diligence is therefore a burden on the qualified person (in this case Ng) rather than the minister.

Ecxentrique SG

I would think that its really the flaws in the whole construction industry system that has led to the lack of safety emphasis..

contractors undercutting each other.. compromising on safety to reduce costs.. all the contractors that has gone down.. some have called it the sunset industry.. maybe its really dying out and this is all but a vicious cycle..

SnowFlag SG

Is LTA not at fault at all? Laughing

Ecxentrique SG

The building control act goes after the qualified person.. in this case its Ng.. less of the company or the developer he was with.. he could be employed by the authority, but i suppose its only fair to go after those who are truly responsible. How does it make sense to go after those who do not have the proper qualifications to monitor the works? If you impose the punishment on the authority, say (at best i suppose you can only fine LTA) then who pays? tax payers? is it right that innocent tax payers pay for the mistakes that is made by those who are qualified to do the job?? not right correct? then if you want to jail someone, then it goes to trace who is the culprit right? then make a guess who it will be?? Ng again right?

Even if say a similar incident is to occur and a private developer is involved, the person in the courts will be the qualified person/ professional engineer.

I guess its only fair that the law goes after the real person who has to shoulder the responsibility.. if not how to have the effect of preventing the mistakes.. so that other qualified persons can really do what they are paid to do and with more due diligence..

Rolling Eyes

robertteh SG

It is precisely because there is a serious problem of this nature you mention - qualified persons not taking responsibility or unable to do so due to circumstances or grey areas in the structural planning and calculation submissions that minister has to exercies his public duty to protect the public against potential structural risks. What Sngapore needs at this juncture is for the minister to exercise his public duty or honour and not keep giving excuses to blame problems on citizens or the lower rung. He should make it a point to ensure that in any compound situation full of passing of bucks that the buck stops at his desk and take suffcient action for tightening up of loopholes or grey areas in the structural planning and calculation submissions and approval.

It is within his power and authority to cause the senior officers in his ministry, LTA or BCA not to push away problems to any QP but to take ownership of problems to close any grey areas or loopholes. One loophole is that because the works involve a government project, the standard of checking might be more loose or relaxed and LTA or BCA might stay out of the picture. So in this situation, he should as higher and final authority come in to set direction, so that the lower rungs will take the cue and do something solid or proactive to correct likely negligence.

After all, the Hotel New World Colllapse inquiry, the minister in charge and the government has assured the public that everything possible will be done to protect the public from another collapse.

As a government our leaders have miserably failed to be accountable and transparent in implementing that Inquiry report to protect the public.

X-men SG

Someone have to face the music

SnowFlag SG

We looked at different sides of the issue.
I am looking at things that leads to the accident Mr. Green

Ecxentrique SG

It is not enough that as a minister he pushes the problem to his ministry, LTA or BCA as without someone higher to set direction, the lower rungs might be unable to do anything.

Yes there are always room for improvement when it comes to preventing unneccessary loss of lives..

Ecxentrique SG

The passing of bucks - I believe it only stopped at the qualified person level. At least to mean that someone had to face trial

About the standard of checking being more loose, i wouldn't know, but if it is then its an area for improvement.

There are opposite forces in play here.. prevention of another collapse.. could lead to more expensive contracts being handed out.. means more tax payer money spent... but its hard to justify if the higher contract sum will guarantee no safety breaches and compromises. how do you explain that to the public?

Salman SG

I think its unfair and silly to blame the minister for the accident.
The safety practices are already in place, if somebody ignores it, its his fault, not the one on top of him.
In the company I used to work for, there are 4 basic safety rules. Anyone who violated these rules can be fired immediately. Each person was made responsible for his own actions. Accident rates are the lowest in the industry.

In the case of Japan, they have this silly and childish practice of resignations of ministers over some accident caused by somebody below him that is remotely controlled by him. Thats why they are mired in recession for more than a decade.

We certainly aren't stupid enough to follow this childish Japanese model to run our country. The person responsible gets punished. The innocent cannot be made responsible for the fault of others.

robertteh SG

quote:Originally posted by robertteh:

It is precisely because there is a serious problem of this nature you mention - qualified persons not taking responsibility or unable to do so due to circumstances or grey areas in the structural planning and calculation submissions that minister has to exercies his public duty to protect the public against potential structural risks. It will be right for minister to say that the buck stops here at his desk and take suffcient action for tightening up of loopholes or grey areas in the structural planning and calculation submissions and approval.

Correct me if i am wrong, so you are suggesting that the minister implement something and if it fails he has to answer for it and step down? As you should know, the minister may not be trained in the field altogether, just like how the engineering CEO's may know the specifics of the things that a financial accountant does. At the end of the day, someone else has to do the job that they are trained in.

If by your reasoning minister not having engineering knowledge cannot be made answerable to what is going on in the engineering aspect of his ministry, then this is a very unsatisfactory arrangement as the public will be the loser.

The PM and his cabinet must not allow such a situation to arise at all in any of the ministry. For example if dengue is to break out a minister who has no medical or disease knowledge should still make himself answerable to prevent it at all costs but assembling a competent team to advise and assist him. If necessary, he ought to use his macro- and micro- management knowledge to get his various multi-skill and multi-functional team to put through a whole program to control the dengue.

If he cannot be made answerable then anyone can be a minister and then disclaim responsibility by saying that he is not qualified and he took no notice or fails to oversee the team. He can of course always take an easier way out by finding a scapegoat but if he is honourable and duty-conscious he would still despite the technical nature of his ministry take sufficient overall control based on the team he oversee to solve all problems.

quote:
It is not enough that as a minister he pushes the problem to his ministry, LTA or BCA as without someone higher to set direction, the lower rungs might be unable to do anything.

What do you mean by setting directions? The law basically states clear and simple that the qualified persons are responsible. In the construction industry, that someone highest up is the qualified person who endorses the structural plans and supervises the construction. The govt (in this case not just one ministry) would probably have to relook the whole set of laws that regulates the industry and its practices altogether since now that this has recurred after the hotel new world incident

As a minister, he should possess suffficient expertise and overall knowledge of all field to look at matters from the overall perspective. If necessary he should be able to examine details closely and even be entrepreneurial and creative to solve problems where his officers with all the technical expertise fail to see or preempt. Therefore our ministers should set this type of directions to ensure there is enough management excellence and corporate governance standards to live up to their constant world-class claim.

quote:
After all, the Hotel New World Colllapse inquiry, the minister in charge and the government has assured the public that everything possible will be done to protect the public from another collapse.

As a government our leaders have miserably failed to be accountable and transparent in implementing that Inquiry report to protect the public.

es there are always room for improvement when it comes to preventing unneccessary loss of lives..

Finally after admitting certain serious problems that need to be addressed you are still finding excuses for the minsiter by saying the same thing as they have always said - honest mistakes and rooms for improvements. It is so sad that our world class standard claim can drop so low sometime resulting in so many recent isasterous mismanagements.

Ecxentrique SG

OK probably i should say that the law do not permit him to be responsible since he is nt qualfied. In that case I think we should get Ng to be the minister since by now he should know best of the consequences and the engineering aspects. .along the way he can pick up mgt skills to run the entire authority
Laughing

my point is.. the case in question is more technical than managerial. I m not shielding them (the ministers/ lta mgt) from disasterous mismanagements. more of why should you look at it as a case of mismanagement instead of a failure on the part of the qualified professional his technical field of expertise? And moreover, the whole set of laws governing the construction industry have to be re-written for you to go after the minister or the head honcho of other private developers..

My disagreement stems from the title in its very self.. Ng being the scape goat.. in my opinion he is not the scape goat, the law has placed the responsibility on him as well as other qualified persons to exercise due diligence in their term as the qualified persons. If not the law comes after you.. and that is what happened.

robertteh SG

The minister in charge appears to get away with the negligence of his ministry again by conveniently punishing the lower rung without addressing underlying serious and fundamental inefficiency as has happened too often.

Some people would defend the minister by saying that he is not technically qualified and that the safety problem involved in too technical.

In my view, whether a matter is more technical or managerial, in this case the problems were the same as those encountered in the earlier Hotel New World collapse and since the problems were supposed to have been addressed then by overhaul of some sorts, why were not those recommendations fully implemented since then. It is wrong to concluded that this case is too technical for the minister to answer.

The fact of the matter is that the minister should have implemented the technical aspects of the Hotel New World Collapase Inquiry recommendations without any excuse be it technical or managerial.

In the Hotel New World case, groups of piles were found installed in haphazard manner compromising the design load bearing capacity. Load factor for the pile tested was found to be 2 instead of the usual 3. Structural plans were submitted 6 months late with no calculations verified by any qualified person.

What kind of lesson has he learned from Hotel New World collapse? Will he ever learn the worse management practice is to keep denying problems and pushing problems to others. Has he taken ownership of such a persistent problem in the construction industry where QPs and contractors continue to push the problem to one another.

The minister should have learned from the experiences found in Hotel New World collapse and implement the recommendations by overseeing his technical team members in his ministry many of whom are supposedly scholars paid more than peanuts ($600K) to look after specific worksite safety and structural safety of building works.

What is the use of employing scholars and talking about talents and leadership when they cannot attend to such safety problems resulting in more building and worksite collapses time and again.

Does the minister know his stuff and role and is duty-conscious, consistent and focused in looking after such portfolio. Is he competent taking into account his past performance, the way he oversees costs at hospital and denies information relating to persistent profiteering bus fare increases even during recession times.

Just imagine our so-called world class leadership and success story has dropped to such atrocious standards of corporate governance.