Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) has announced in a tweet at 5.33 am on Thursday (28 September), which happen to be the first day of the PSLE exam, that its East-West Line (EWL) between Tanah Merah and Pasir Ris was experiencing 30 minutes delay due to track point fault, adding that it was not linked to new signalling project.
SMRT then announced that it was providing free regular bus services.
Around an hour later, SMRT announced that the train service has resumed and ask commuters to add 20 minutes travelling time due to the fault.
Around two hours after its first tweet, SMRT tweeted that the service were progressively being restored and 10 minutes train travel time between Tanah Merah and Pasir Ris was needed.
At 8.37 am, SMRT announced that the fault had resumed.
Ministry of Education (MOE) posted on its Facebook page, a note to all students affected by the delay.
It wrote, “National exam candidates who are affected by train service delay between Tanah Merah and Pasir Ris stations are advised to inform their school as soon as possible and go to their exam centre before the end of the paper to sit for the exams.”
MOE stressed that full paper duration would be given and no excuse letter from the train station is required.
Commuters took to social media to complain what they had to go through and shared details over the delays.
A video uploaded by Mr Seamus See also shown that the train moved very slowly at the pace of walking.
Train moving as fast as people on foot @SMRT_Singapore @smrtsg pic.twitter.com/33xnG7GOy0
— Seamus See (@seamusee) September 27, 2017
Unannounced delay on North South Line
Many netizens also took to social media that the North-South Line (NSL) also experienced delay due to train fault which caused the door not to be able to open and also appeared to have caused signalling fault along the line.
However, there were no official announcement by SMRT on the matter on the social media and they only announced the delay on the platform after a while.
