NEA CEO’s open letter: Full of empty rhetoric and short of substance

NEA CEO’s open letter: Full of empty rhetoric and short of substance

I refer to the letter sent to the media by NEA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Tan which was published on 18 April 2009 by The Straits Times (read letter here)

While I applaud Mr Tan for his promise to step up NEA’s vigilance and enforce higher standards of public hygiene on all food outlets, there is no way we can move forward unless the mistakes unearthed by the Geylang Serai food poisoning outbreak are acknowledged and addressed.

Mr Tan’s lengthy article is full of empty rhetoric on NEA’s past efforts to maintain public hygiene in Singapore, but stop short of admitting culpability on the part of both the market’s management committee and NEA itself.

According to Mr Tan, the number of food poisoning cases in Singapore is “very low”. Over the last three years, there has been an “average of only four food poisoning incidents” a year.

I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the quoted figure. Food poisoning cases are hardly reported to the authorities by doctors unless there is suspicion of a major outbreak like the Geylang Serai case.

As we have no real figures on the number of actual cases of diarrhoea caused directly by poor food hygiene, it is inappropriate to use it as a measure of NEA’s track record in upholding public health and hygiene.

While Mr Tan has taken conscious efforts to explain NEA’s grading scheme of food hygiene in his letter, he had failed to allay public concerns about its effectiveness and the four month delay in handling out of the updated decals to the Geylang Serai market hawkers.

I am also bemused by Mr Tan’s clumsy attempts to exonerate the Geylang Serai market management committee from blame over its abject failure to maintain the cleanliness and hygiene of the market’s premises.

Mr Tan wrote that “despite the best of efforts put in by the Temporary Market Management Committee in implementing its cleaning regime and in tackling the rat infestation problem, the problem had persisted.”

I hope Mr Tan is not trying to sound sarcastic here. Contrary to Mr Tan’s erroneous belief, the management committee has been sitting on the problem since the market was set up in spite of numerous complaints from the stallholders themselves. What they could have easily done in three years was accomplished by a team of pest controllers in less than a week.

This is a perverse judgement coming from a public official paid by taxpayers. It is perverse because NEA should act in the interest of the public at all times instead of shielding the culpable parties from blame.

As an enforcement authority, NEA has the powers to identify the members of the management committee and prosecute them for lapses in food and environmental hygiene under the same law which they used to bring the Indian rojak stallholder to court.

Though NEA is not directly responsible for the food poisoning outbreak, lapses in its enforcement of public hygiene at the market have contributed to the tragedy.

Mr Tan should be gracious enough to admit the shortcomings of NEA and apologize to the public for failure to prevent the outbreak from occurring.

Singaporeans do not need any more empty words and promises from the authorities. What we want to see most is accountability, justice and transparency - accountabilty in taking responsibility for one’s missteps, justice in ensuring the culprits are punished and transparency in revealing the findings of the internal inquiry to the public.

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