The Blame Game

As the past week was an insanely hectic one for me, I barely had time to stay updated with what's been happening in the news. When i finally had time to catch up on the week's happenings, the tragic Geylang Serai food poisoning cases got my attention. Honestly, i got so bothered by what's been going on that if i were not bound by the cs code, i probably would have written in to the forum (not that there would be much chance of it being published though). So i guess being pissed off here is the next best thing.

Read any of the mainstream local media (out of necessity more than anything else) and the blame always seems to gravitate towards the stall owner, Mr Sheikh Allaudin and his staff. Since ultimately it was his stall that served the tainted food, definitely at least some of the blame for what has happened lies with him. To give him some credit, he has accepted the blame and apologized for what has happened and is prepared to face the consequences.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the NEA and the Environment and Water Resources Ministry as a whole. I really don't know how they can sleep at night after all the shifting of blame and responsibility that they've been engaged in in the wake of this incident.

For starters, NEA gave the incredulous response that they are not directly responsible for the hygiene in temporary markets and food centres, but only at permanent ones. Instead, the management committee is supposed to be in charge, and the NEA just conducts spot checks. I wish someone could enlighten me on the logic behind such a move. Logic, that is, beyond the NEA trying to shirk from its rightful responsibility. Even if the choice to build a temporary market is not up to the NEA and may be a voluntary undertaking by the local traders' association, surely there is the need for the relevant government agency in whatever case to take an overall policing and enforcement role. And this should all the more be so in temporary markets such as the one in Geylang Serai, where the workmanship, facilities and what not may possibly not hold up as well as those at the permanent site and therefore require more hand-holding on the part of the government agency. After all, they are the logical experts when it comes to food hygiene, not any management committee. If not, why bother to have such a body in the first place? At the very least, the NEA should apologize for instituting this policy in the first place and change it in the wake of its painfully obvious shortcomings as demonstrated in this case.

According to the ST, all the cooked food stalls in the temporary market have received a mixture of B and C hygiene grades. In other words, there's not a single A amongst them. I must admit that I'm not the most frequent visitor of food centres islandwide but nevertheless i'd like to think that at every food centre there are at least a handful, if not even just one, stall that manages to be hygiene-conscious enough for an A rating to be warranted. That not even a single stall was able to attain an A grade ought to have triggered alarm bells at the NEA, at least during one of their so-called spot checks. This ought to have signalled to them that it may not simply be an issue with the hawkers, but also with the venue itself. Didn't they spot even one of the now famous sixty-one rats during these checks? One wonders if they had not let their guard down since they were not directly responsible for the hygiene there, and hence would not kena if something happened to them, as in fact turned out to be the case.

And speaking of the rats, the ST also mentions that Mr Ahmad S. Said, the president of the Geylang Serai Traders' Association had raised the matter of rat and roach infestations with the NEA as early as March last year - more than a year ago. I wonder what the NEA had done, if anything at all, upon being alerted to this matter. Were any large-scale rat-catching exercises like the one that coughed up sixty-one, 'tip-of-the-iceberg' rodents following this food poisonong outbreak carried out in response to Mr Ahmad's notification? It's somewhat tragically amusing to see how all these wayang efforts at improving the hygiene standards can pop up everywhere, alongside the blowing of much hot air from the relevant ministers with choice quotes like "it's outrageous that this has happened". This instead of the constant vigilant policing that should have been the case long before this incident happened and that is but expected of a place with a carefully-cultivated reputation for cleanliness such as S'pore.

Yes, Mr Yaacob, it's outrageous that this has happened. Don't forget though, that it's also outrageous that you and your ministry let it happen. How disappointing it is that this is the level of accountability that we get with million-dollar ministerial salaries.