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21-09-2016, 07:10 PM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
Seems like the PAP cannot even do a simple thing nowadays. How can you fuck up a simple tender for a bus contract for a few lines of service? Well, when you have a grossly incompetent former admiral retired Chew Men Leong running LTA, you can fuck that up and more.
About 15 months ago, the LTA changed the bus service model in singapore to one call the BCM aka bus contracting model. The first contract for Bulim lines was awarded to a foreign bus company, an australian/british outfit called Towers. At that time, I posted here that I had serious misgivings about this winner. Firstly, they were not the lowest bid. In fact, at $553 million their bid was the third lowest, the SMRT bid coming in the lowest at $453 million. SBS transit came in at $600 million while another local company Woodlands came in at $683 million. Now in the second round of BCM for the Loyang routes, LTA awarded it to another foreign company, a British company called Go-Ahead. Its seems that the LTA is adamant that no local operator will win any of these BCM contracts, my theory being that they are inherently unprofitable, and a GLC like SMRT has to be protected from losing money on bus routes. Therefore, the tenders do have a degree of wayang in them. This time, Go-Ahead did actually have the lowest bid of $497 million followed by SBS Bus at $546 million and SMRT at $598 million.
fast forward to 10 months later, and Go-Ahead is screaming for help. Many of the bus captains that they have hired have quit. In part due to the work policies put in and quoted by some of their ex staff that there were not enough breaks, all this despite paying more then what the starting salaries for SMRT and SBS bus captains. It is a failing of a MNC, coming into the local market, and not being aware of the local practices and standards, falsely assured by NTUC and their trade unions that the workers will be subservient and can be controlled. They forgot to mention the little fact that most of their work force are FT from PRC, Malaysia, etc. These people are like gold now after the work permit numbers were restricted, and know that they can find work somewhere else relatively easily. Foreign companies coming in here cannot read the ground no matter how many local assistant GMs they hire.
Somehow, Go-Ahead managed to get the LTA to arrow SBS, SMRT, and Towers to pitch in and help them out by sending their own drivers to cover for Go-Ahead on the routes that were short of drivers. I have never seen a situation where competitors in the same market are required to help each other out. Imagine how tulan SBS and SMRT must be. Not only did they lose the contract to Go-Ahead, they now have to help them out as though they have so much free drivers sitting around shaking leg? What ever happened to honouring a legal contract that you signed with a govt stat board? i mean Go Ahead signed a contract for almost $500 million, plus they get to keep all the advertising revenues on their buses and what not, to provide bus services for their area. Whether they have enough drivers or not is not the problem of LTA. If they cannot fulfill their contract, they are supposed to be fined, or penalized in some form. What happened to that? And if they cannot really do it, they should cancel their contract, lose some form of money, and the tender be re-opened again. Why is LTA jumping in to help them? Does other stat boards or govt Ministries jump in to bail out companies that have signed contracts with them? Or do foreign companies get special treatments and not locals?
Chew Men Leong, the ex admiral had this to say when awarding the contract to Go-Ahead. "Go-Ahead demonstrated a thorough understanding of ground conditions and strong ability in developing strategies to manage specific scenarios for each bus route," LTA said. "At the same time, Go-Ahead also emphasised in its proposal a stringent bus maintenance regime for bus assets and infrastructure.". I guess all that was just bullshit, because Go-Ahead did not throughly understand the ground conditions or they would not be in the predicament that they are in.
I maintain that there was never a need for the BCM. Just because SMRT was screaming that they were losing money on bus routes is not enough justification to switch to the BCM. That is their problem. If they are losing money, they will just have to subsidize it from their profit making rail business. In any case, their profits are fine, and they are just greedy by wanting more because big Boss Whore Jinx says so. the commuting public never asked for this, the commuting public never wanted this, this was all driven by a PAP/LTA/SMRT agenda. Now, they have egg on their face because the second of 2 contracts is already in trouble.
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (https://sammyboy.com/showthread.php?235761-The-New-PAP-fuckup-that-is-the-BCM-bus-model-and-Go-Ahead-Bus&goto=newpost).
Seems like the PAP cannot even do a simple thing nowadays. How can you fuck up a simple tender for a bus contract for a few lines of service? Well, when you have a grossly incompetent former admiral retired Chew Men Leong running LTA, you can fuck that up and more.
About 15 months ago, the LTA changed the bus service model in singapore to one call the BCM aka bus contracting model. The first contract for Bulim lines was awarded to a foreign bus company, an australian/british outfit called Towers. At that time, I posted here that I had serious misgivings about this winner. Firstly, they were not the lowest bid. In fact, at $553 million their bid was the third lowest, the SMRT bid coming in the lowest at $453 million. SBS transit came in at $600 million while another local company Woodlands came in at $683 million. Now in the second round of BCM for the Loyang routes, LTA awarded it to another foreign company, a British company called Go-Ahead. Its seems that the LTA is adamant that no local operator will win any of these BCM contracts, my theory being that they are inherently unprofitable, and a GLC like SMRT has to be protected from losing money on bus routes. Therefore, the tenders do have a degree of wayang in them. This time, Go-Ahead did actually have the lowest bid of $497 million followed by SBS Bus at $546 million and SMRT at $598 million.
fast forward to 10 months later, and Go-Ahead is screaming for help. Many of the bus captains that they have hired have quit. In part due to the work policies put in and quoted by some of their ex staff that there were not enough breaks, all this despite paying more then what the starting salaries for SMRT and SBS bus captains. It is a failing of a MNC, coming into the local market, and not being aware of the local practices and standards, falsely assured by NTUC and their trade unions that the workers will be subservient and can be controlled. They forgot to mention the little fact that most of their work force are FT from PRC, Malaysia, etc. These people are like gold now after the work permit numbers were restricted, and know that they can find work somewhere else relatively easily. Foreign companies coming in here cannot read the ground no matter how many local assistant GMs they hire.
Somehow, Go-Ahead managed to get the LTA to arrow SBS, SMRT, and Towers to pitch in and help them out by sending their own drivers to cover for Go-Ahead on the routes that were short of drivers. I have never seen a situation where competitors in the same market are required to help each other out. Imagine how tulan SBS and SMRT must be. Not only did they lose the contract to Go-Ahead, they now have to help them out as though they have so much free drivers sitting around shaking leg? What ever happened to honouring a legal contract that you signed with a govt stat board? i mean Go Ahead signed a contract for almost $500 million, plus they get to keep all the advertising revenues on their buses and what not, to provide bus services for their area. Whether they have enough drivers or not is not the problem of LTA. If they cannot fulfill their contract, they are supposed to be fined, or penalized in some form. What happened to that? And if they cannot really do it, they should cancel their contract, lose some form of money, and the tender be re-opened again. Why is LTA jumping in to help them? Does other stat boards or govt Ministries jump in to bail out companies that have signed contracts with them? Or do foreign companies get special treatments and not locals?
Chew Men Leong, the ex admiral had this to say when awarding the contract to Go-Ahead. "Go-Ahead demonstrated a thorough understanding of ground conditions and strong ability in developing strategies to manage specific scenarios for each bus route," LTA said. "At the same time, Go-Ahead also emphasised in its proposal a stringent bus maintenance regime for bus assets and infrastructure.". I guess all that was just bullshit, because Go-Ahead did not throughly understand the ground conditions or they would not be in the predicament that they are in.
I maintain that there was never a need for the BCM. Just because SMRT was screaming that they were losing money on bus routes is not enough justification to switch to the BCM. That is their problem. If they are losing money, they will just have to subsidize it from their profit making rail business. In any case, their profits are fine, and they are just greedy by wanting more because big Boss Whore Jinx says so. the commuting public never asked for this, the commuting public never wanted this, this was all driven by a PAP/LTA/SMRT agenda. Now, they have egg on their face because the second of 2 contracts is already in trouble.
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (https://sammyboy.com/showthread.php?235761-The-New-PAP-fuckup-that-is-the-BCM-bus-model-and-Go-Ahead-Bus&goto=newpost).