By Fann
Sim | Yahoo!
Newsroom – 36 minutes
ago
MP Seng
Han Thong appeared on "BlogTV.sg" where he made an insensitive
remark on air. (Screengrab from YouTube)
UPDATED
Member of Parliament (MP) Seng Han
Thong has apologised for a comment
on national television that appeared to criticise the English
spoken by Malay and Indian
SMRT staff.
In his Facebook post late Thursday
morning, Seng said, "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."
In a note on his
Facebook late Wednesday night, Seng
had posted a partial transcript of the talk show and said that
"unfortunately, some of my comments were mis-interpreted".
During the latest
episode of "Blog.TV" on Channel NewsAsia on Monday, the MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC had said one of the reasons
for SMRT's unpreparedness to deal
with the disruptions last week was, according to the company's
public relations team, the bad command of English by SMRT's Malay and Indian staff.
He said, "I noticed
that the PR mentioned that some of the staff because they are
Malay, they are Indian, they can't converse in English good, well
enough, so that also deters them, from (sic) but I think we accept
broken English."
His quote
appears after the 2-minute mark.
Local
blog The Online
Citizen first posted the story, which quickly drew a
flurry of comments from readers, who said the MP should have known better than to single out the
minority races.
Munny, a 23-year-old
engineer, said that his comment offended her as a Malay.
"The way he said it,
it was as if he was stereotyping the entire Malay community, that
we are unable to communicate properly," said Munny.
Another Facebook user Mirza Mira added, "Please think before you
speak. You are representing the multiracial community. I am very
disappointed with your remarks...for pointing minority races for
contribution of MRT incident problem."
Luqman Hussin also
said that making ground level staff scapegoats for SMRT's recent troubles was
unfair.
"I'm very much
disturbed that an elected official, chairman of the transportation
committee no less, can make such poorly considered and illogical
statements. As if it wasn't disappointing enough that ground
level SMRT staff are being made scapegoats for management
lapses, introducing a racial element into the story is absolutely
unforgiveable," he wrote.
Netizen Ashley Ten,
27, said although Seng seemed to be quoting another person, perhaps
a public relations officer, "it is shocking to hear such comments
by an MP. Whatever it is, it's still a very insensitive and
unnecessary thing to say."
Tok Nicholas wrote
on Facebook, "It's
sad to see that so many people are posting many derogatory comments
about you sir. Possibly misintepreted your words. It's unfair to be
treated this way when you mentioned a quote from the PR."
Yet others felt Seng
had yet to explain how his comments were mis-interpreted.
"From the
transcript, it is even more incomprehensible. And you have yet to
explain, in properly (sic) English, how your comments have been
misintepreted," said user Luqman Anuar.
The television
programme discussed the train disruptions that happened earlier
this month and questioned if it could have been better handled.
Seng, who was one of
the five guests on the show, was invited to provide a perspective
from his role as the deputy chairman of the Government
Parliamentary Committee for Transport.
During the talkshow,
Seng criticised SMRT's
top-down communication and said that the staff on the ground were
not given instructions quick enough on what to do.
"I believe the staff
are waiting for instructions from the top, the operating control
centre, the top, if the top did not give instructions, they cannot
say anything for fear of that they might say something wrong," said
Seng.
