"penalties slapped on suppliers might well end up being passed
to consumers." --- Mr Khoo Chin Hean, chief executive of the power
industry regulator, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) on fining the
culprits of the big blackout"
The above remark was made by the head honcho of Singapore's energy
supplies, the Regulator of our power industry. I think he should
just be Singapore's vibrator for the power companies instead. As
the authority of the industry, he says that it is useless to punish
the power suppliers because the suppliers will jack up prices and
than Singaporeans pay more. On the surface, this is such a People
remark, but this remark just shows that the Authority has got no
authority. This quote suggests that the EMA cannot punish the power
suppliers because, the suppliers will just jack up prices. My
simple question: if you are the Authority, can you not prevent them
frm jacking up prices arbitrarily?
If the Energy Market Authority cannot punish the corporations
without protecting Singaporeans, I can only surmise that the
Authority's main role is to do quality testing for Duracell and
EverReady batteries and make sure that they are packed in
vacuum-sealed packaging. Their other main role must be to change
the light-bulbs in Pulau Ubin. The above is my guess of what EMA
does since they seem pretty flaccid in terms of power.
So for once, I actually did some research for my column and went to
the EMA website to find out their mission statement. I almost fell
off my chair, they actually LISTED to safeguard consumers'
interests as one of their goals.
(http://www.ema.gov.sg/profile.php) But wait a minute, their number
one goal is to forge a competitive market. Does forging a
competitive market mean kowtow to industry and let them stick their
electricity rods into your ass?
So EMA's catchy slogan is Think Ahead and Change Today. I think
this slogan may be too complicated for the CEO of EMA since he
obviously does not understand the meaning of his organisation's
slogan. I believe that the slogan should be changed to just
"THINK"; as in, using your brains to figure something out. For
those of you lazy bummers my public service is the following
mission statements from the EMA website. Enjoy.
Zhong Eh
03.07.04
thevoiddeck.org