"penalties slapped on suppliers might well end up being passed to consumers." --- Mr Khoo Chin Hean, chief executive of the power industry regulator, the Energy Market Authority (EMA) on fining the culprits of the big blackout"
The above remark was made by the head honcho of Singapore's energy supplies, the Regulator of our power industry. I think he should just be Singapore's vibrator for the power companies instead. As the authority of the industry, he says that it is useless to punish the power suppliers because the suppliers will jack up prices and than Singaporeans pay more. On the surface, this is such a People remark, but this remark just shows that the Authority has got no authority. This quote suggests that the EMA cannot punish the power suppliers because, the suppliers will just jack up prices. My simple question: if you are the Authority, can you not prevent them frm jacking up prices arbitrarily?
If the Energy Market Authority cannot punish the corporations without protecting Singaporeans, I can only surmise that the Authority's main role is to do quality testing for Duracell and EverReady batteries and make sure that they are packed in vacuum-sealed packaging. Their other main role must be to change the light-bulbs in Pulau Ubin. The above is my guess of what EMA does since they seem pretty flaccid in terms of power.
So for once, I actually did some research for my column and went to the EMA website to find out their mission statement. I almost fell off my chair, they actually LISTED to safeguard consumers' interests as one of their goals. (http://www.ema.gov.sg/profile.php) But wait a minute, their number one goal is to forge a competitive market. Does forging a competitive market mean kowtow to industry and let them stick their electricity rods into your ass?
So EMA's catchy slogan is Think Ahead and Change Today. I think this slogan may be too complicated for the CEO of EMA since he obviously does not understand the meaning of his organisation's slogan. I believe that the slogan should be changed to just "THINK"; as in, using your brains to figure something out. For those of you lazy bummers my public service is the following mission statements from the EMA website. Enjoy.
Zhong Eh
03.07.04
thevoiddeck.org