Employee chides woman whose autistic child fiddled with train equipment, SBS Transit apologises
An SBS Transit officer got into an argument with a commuter after her son was caught fiddling with train equipment on the MRT.
Stomper Anonymous alerted Stomp to a June 26 TikTok video posted by Yuanquan.sg, which captured the incident on the Downtown Line towards Geylang Bahru MRT station.
In the video, Yuanquan.sg described the situation, saying: "At the front of the subway, there's a little boy, I don't know what he was doing. He was reprimanded by the staff member next to him.
"The little boy went back to his mother. The mother got into an argument with the staff member."
During the exchange, the staff member said: "Everything is recorded."
The mother replied: "Why do you need to shout like that?"
"No, he didn't stop, I tell him don't, you see he's still smiling," he responded.
"Because he has autism, sir, you know what is autism or not?" she retorted.
"I know," said the staff member, before being cut off by the mother, who asked: "Then why you say he's still smiling?"
"Now I know, last time I didn't know," he explained.
"You're supposed to take care of your kids, you know, it's not my job hor," he added in the video.
"So I let him open [the door], then 1,000 people walk to next station, I close down two stations for you?"
At the next station, several TransCom officers were seen escorting the mother and her two children off the train.
In response to a Stomp query, SBS Transit acknowledged the incident.
"Our customer service officer (CSO) witnessed a child, who was on his own, trying to remove a nut from emergency equipment after he had unsuccessfully tried to peel off safety signage in a train carriage," said spokesperson Grace Wu.
"Our staff then approached the child's caregiver to inform her of the situation.
"While his safety concerns were valid, he could have handled the situation calmly, and we apologise for the distress caused to her.
The transport operator also reminded commuters to supervise young children closely for their own safety and that of others.
