Will the People’s Action Party [PAP] please end this wayang now? It doesn’t take much brains to guess that the fare review was deliberately delayed before the General Election to keep it from being an election topic. Above which, I know for a fact the Public Transport Council [PTC] will approve all fare increments. The PTC might not approve the full amount the transport operators asked for to show they have been “judicious” about it, but who knows that the amount asked for wasn’t already inflated in the first place? Just think about it, the transport operators are still making record profits almost every year! I shudder to imagine how much more profits would there be if the PTC wasn’t*erhem* “judicious”.

When I first read what Lim Boon Heng said, the very first thing that came to mind was, “Just how low will they go to justify the fare increments?” Some where at the back of my head I seem to recall the National Trade Union Congress [NTUC] (if not Lim Boon Heng himself) has always told workers not to expect wage increments as if it is an entitlement. So I am really sorry to say this stinks of hypocrisy.

Is Lim Boon Heng not aware just how absurd and idiotic this is? How is it fair that we must allow for fare increments to ensure that these two semi-monopoly have profits so that their workers get wage increments or to cover their cost when no one else is guaranteed the same? How is it fair to some of us who haven’t had a wage increase for years to be told that we need to fork out more from our pockets so transport workers get theirs? Stop telling me about fairness when our gripes about the horrible service standards remained the same all these years.

But since Lim Boon Heng wants to talk about fairness, I would personally love to see some of that fare increment goes into the more concession for senior citizens and extended to polytechnic students. How is it fair that polytechnic students are made to pay the full fare when their A-Level or ITE peers are subsidised? How is it fair that senior are forced to take public transport only at selected hours only when they are expected not to retire? As I recalled, wasn’t it Lim Boon Heng who sounded the death knell for retirement and that means even senior citizens go to work during peak hours in the future? If I am not wrong, under the to be enacted re-employment legislation, the wages of senior citizens “could be adjusted down taking into account the employee’s productivity, performance, responsibilities, any earlier reduction made when an employee reached 60 years of age, etc.. So how is it fair they are now told to pay more for someone else’s wage increment?

Surprisingly, the transport operators (or was it the PTC) have always turned down request from the public for fairer subsidies for these two groups. The reason they gave was that the current concessions given is a form of cross subsidy – i.e. the cost of the concession is borne by full fare passengers. Thus, it is their opinion that giving more concession would “increase the cost for full fare paying passengers”.

I would have been moved to tears if not for the fact that the transport operators are making obscene profits year on year (SMRT – S$161.1 million, SBS Transit S$54.3 million). Frankly I wondered whether they were genuinely concerned that we might be paying more, or that more concessions for senior citizens and polytechnic students simply meant less profits. Perhaps if their respective CEOs are awarded with less director fees and remuneration, that would have been enough to finance those concessions. After all, SMRT CEO Saw Phiak Hwa was rewarded only S$1.8 million in 2010.

I repeat what I have always said in the past pertaining to more fare concession for senior citizens and polytechnic students – Show us the frakking bill. Just frakking show us how much more we really have to pay so the above concession should be given. Let us decide whether we want to foot that bill instead of acting like the PTC or the transport operators actually cared when they obviously don’t.

I wondered if Lim Boon Heng is aware he opened a can of worms with his silly and almost senile comment. And didn’t he retire from politics? I recalled there was quite a show when he announced his retirement, complete with tears and the likes. It was a spectacular act worthy of the Oscars.

So, Lim Boon Heng should stay retired. My advice is that he also do this for his own good – Shut up and sit down. And I ain’t even being rude because to any other people I would have simply said, “What the lanfang was that? Tuck yew seriously!”

Addendum: On the matter of concession, I would also like to see the height for young children raised from 0.9m to 1.2m since children these days have better nutrition and would grow faster. It would be unfair to expect children to be of the same size as those back when this stupid regulation was set.