Why pupils at stadium faced long wait

25 July 2006

Mdm Tan Lay Tuan raised the issue of the late dismissal of pupils from the National Stadium after the National Education (NE) Show on 15 July 2006 (“Pupils at stadium waited 4 hours to be dismissed”, ST, 19 July).
On behalf of the National Day Parade 2006 Executive Committee, we apologise for the inconvenience caused to the parents whose children returned home late after the NE Show.
With more than 52,000 pupils participating in the NE Show, their safe arrival and departure was of utmost importance to us. As such, we took deliberate steps to ensure that every pupil was accounted for during their movement and boarding of the buses.
On the day of the NE Show, a number of buses that were present had to make a second trip to ferry the children back to school. In getting these buses to turn around in the shortest possible time to begin the second trip, we assigned the buses to schools located closest to the stadium first. We could only attend to the remaining children when these buses returned to the stadium.
We apologise once again for the anxiety caused by the children’s late return. We will take steps to improve the transport arrangements for future NE shows.

BG Goh Kee Nguan
Chairman NDP ExCo 2006,
Ministry of Defence

Sum Chee Wah (Ms)
Director, Education Programmes,
Ministry of Education