A Day in the Life of an SMRT Personnel

Posted by: Team OnTheRightTrack

Service With a Smile: Mr Jefferson Phua has worked with SMRT for 26 years, retiring last year. Throughout his career, he has juggled many responsibilities which include driving a train. Photo credit: Jefferson Phua

If you think it is easy to manage a train station or handle a train, you are dreadfully wrong. We have heard about many people thinking that SMRT personnels have an easy job, sitting in the office to ‘lepak’ all day, helping people to top up their EZ-Link cards and making simple announcements. But in actual fact, they do far more than that.

This was exactly what we discovered today when we spoke to Mr Jefferson Phua, 56, who has worked with SMRT since 1987. He recounted his experiences and gave us a taste of how working in the train station is not as easy as it seems. Here is the interview we had with him!

Q: How long do you have to work each day?

A: We work very long hours because sometimes, there is a shortage of staff so we have to take over their shifts. For example, if the staff working in the morning shift falls ills and is unable to report for work, I have to cover for him.

Q: As a station manager, what are some of your responsibilities?

A: Wow, there’s a lot of things I had to do! I had to take care of the station equipment, ensure passenger safety, make sure that the accounts are in proper order, attend to emergencies and even know first aid. We also walked around most of the time to check for station premises security. Whereas at night (for night shift) the trackside 750v current are turned off by HQ remotely, but ground staff had to physically checked with a voltmeter to ensure that the electrical currents are off totally and proper devices are used to secure its proper place to trip those strayed current and protect maintenance staff whenever there is trackside work. Not forgetting in doing so we also have to protect ourselves by wearing high visibility belt, heavy duty rubber gloves, signal lamp, torch lights etc. No staff or contractor is allowed to work on the track without proper attires and protective gears.

Q: Wow, you operated trains before? How was it like?

A: Driving trains is not as easy as it seems, you know. For driving trains, they do not use any pedals, it is all hand controlled which makes it even harder. But it’s not so straightforward. We have to be very familiar with the train and its commands because if we do not control them well, the train will be very jerky. And this is on top of train drivers putting in longer hours. They have really nasty schedules and sleep is certainly affected.

Q: Your job is quite stressful, as you said you have to work long hours. Do you have short break times for your meal?

A: No, we do not have meal breaks because we are not allowed to leave the station. We can only eat inside the station instead. The juniors, however, are given a 45-minute break so they will go out and buy their own meal and at the same time buy for us. You can say that we are at their mercy because if you are a good manager, then they will buy for you. If they don’t like you, then you have no food!

Q: It does seem like a tough work. But working with SMRT for 26 years must have given you some memorable experiences. Can you share some of them with us?

A: There are quite a few. But one which I can recall off my mind would be this incident where a lady forgot her wallet and could not take the train. So I passed her $10 and told her to return the money to me next time she passes by the train station. Something else that I enjoyed would be the Malay food near some of the stations I managed! In Eunos and Bedok, my junior used to buy Nasi Lemak from Eunos Hawker Centre and Briyani (S$4.00) from Alauddin Briyani in Bedok. I tell you, these were some of the nicest food I have ever eaten! You should go try them one day.