About 70 food-delivery riders showed up at the Meet-the-People Session (MPS) held in Taman Jurong yesterday evening (11 Nov) to urge the government to lift it’s e-scooter ban on footpaths.
Dressed in their food-delivery attire, they expressed their concerns to Mr Ang Wei Neng, Member of Parliament (MP) for Jurong GRC, who sat in to hear their appeal on behalf of Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam – who was overseas.
However, things got really heated half way through the session as a few of the riders lamented their frustrations with great intensity.
A 5-minute footage capturing the dramatic discourse has been circulating across social media since last night. In the video, an elderly man can be seen gesturing angrily at Mr Ang as he called out the government for implementing the ban.
“Can the government withdraw the law? Take back the law! Can? Yes or no?” the elderly man shouted.
Subsequently, a man at the back proclaimed, “We are human, not dog!”
“Can you give us the S$7 million? Can you give us on the spot the S$7 million that we need? On the spot!” the elderly man continued.
The elderly man was most likely referring to the newly introduced S$7 million e-scooter trade-in grant announced by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) last Friday (8 Nov).
The crowd then applauded the elderly man for voicing out. But, the elderly man had more to say.
“You take back all our freedom! You take all our freedom! You see… and now we become enemies! We are enemies inside our own country! Are you running a communist law now?” he added furiously.
With the sudden escalation of tension, the crowd proceeded to calm the elderly man down while thanking him for taking a bold stance.
Another man then quickly interjected as he raised a concern on the eagerness of Singaporeans to put up pictures and videos of e-scooter riders on social media, tarnishing the reputation of all PMD users as a result.
He went on to suggest that members of the public are the “ones offending us and triggering our tempers here”.
“We don’t owe them anything! We are not their slaves! We have served the country, we have contributed to our nation! Yet we never get any benefits from the government!” he noted fervently as the crowd projects their agreement via applause and cheers.
Later on, a woman stood up in front of Mr Ang to say that a rider apparently had his personal information recorded by an officer for defying the ban and was told that he would be subjected to a fine if caught again.
Not much could be heard from Mr Ang throughout the whole video, although he did tell the crowd that he will take note of all their feedback from the session.
Watch the full video here:
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