Thinking that there would be a feeder service, I waited patiently in line. One hour later, I was still in line and I found the reason for the slow movement of people. The buses came at 15-minute intervals and, worse, they were already jam-packed by the time they arrived at Simei. Apparently, they had picked up passengers from Tampines first. What was the point?

In the end, I took an SBS bus to Tanah Merah MRT. While on the bus, I watched TV Mobile and found that although the disruption had occurred four hours earlier, there were no news updates during the morning show to inform commuters heading to MRT stations of the disruptions. Ironically, there was a headliner that announced SMRT's opening of a $2m gallery showcasing SMRT's 'progress'.

I was disappointed by the way the whole episode was handled. There was nobody to provide updates to the people in the queue snaking over 200m long and we only got updates if we left our queue to go to the station to make enquiries.

SMRT failed miserably with its contingency plans.

Latifah Ahmad (Mdm)