Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Tolerance for mistakes

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Tolerance for mistakes

I posted this comment in www.theonlinecitizen.com regarding the case of a father who went through the immigration checkpoint using his son's passport (by mistake).

I am appalled at the attitude of Singaporeans to mistakes that must occur from time to time.
The photograph on the passport is usually taken a few years ago. It may be difficult for the immigration officer to detect the difference between a father and son from the photograph. It is sometimes diffiult to judge a person's age from his physical appearance.

If our immigration officers have to screen through 350.000 Singaporeans and visitors each day, an error rate of 1% of 1% means that 35 people will have to be missed daily.

Is there a big security risk? I doubt it. If I am a criminal trying to flee Singapore, there are better and easier ways to leave this place than using a wrong passport.

I do not like to see over-reaction that will lead to stricter measures that will create a lot of inconvenience to ordinary people who has to travel.

I do not tolerate complacency. I am very irrated to see customer service officers chatting among themselves, rather than serving the customer. This also applies to immigration officers. They should pay attention to their work, rather than chat among themselves to relieve the boredom. I hope that the supervisors can instill this discipline.

Let us accept mistakes as they occur and do not try to exaggerate their impact. We are not a perfect society. Let us focus on the more important things in life.

10 comments:

siewkhim said...: Dear Kin Lian,

The overeaction is probably to make good on the Mas Selamat fiasco. Maybe to create a diversion on "lost but still not found".

Despite all the blah blah, Mas Selamat is still running lose, maybe very desperate and more dangerous than the recent incident. Should give a deadline on his capture otherwise can presume he is already 6 feet underground.; June 25, 2008 10:45 AM
David said...: In air travel, before you are issued the boarding pass, the counter officer should check that the name in the booking and document tally with passport, right? This is where the crucial slipup occurs. And even so, does the name in boarding pass and passport tally? So the officers doing further checks along the process are not properly trained to check on this aspect. This is basic and not excusable. This has got nothing to do with the looks of the person. It's not like travelling across Causeway.; June 25, 2008 11:04 AM
LivingRoom said...: can be a little bit more kinder to those who made mistakes...cos' the day will come when we need it too...

...we all will make mistakes...; June 25, 2008 1:14 PM
Unknown said...: 1)this signal a bigger issue. Every procedure & figure looks good on paper in Singapore but in reality people are not performing.
p/s: we often mistaken form for substance.

2)I agree with you that it is mistake and we should on....BUT we have to also look into why in the recent years the masses are so unforgiving?
p/s: if you do a ground check....you can feel how many ppl are PISSED.....; June 25, 2008 1:41 PM
Raymond T said...: Mr Tan... with this latest boo boo coming so soon after the Mas Selamat fiasco... something needs to done or "seen" to be done :); June 25, 2008 2:36 PM
zhummmeng said...: You may think that way. You are so forgiving. ..But what about the garment? not so, right? Why people are picking on them on slightest opportunity? The fed up, the pent up over the years and when to vent? if not now, when?; June 25, 2008 5:30 PM
SingaSoft said...: I have personal experience that happened in the SGH pharmacy. The pharmacy gave me a drug called digoxin which the dosage was 4 times more than what the doctor has prescribed.
I did not realize the mistake until I arrived at home and did a re-check against the doctor's prescription. I went back immediately, and the pharmacy acknowledge the error, apologized and exchanged the drugs for me.
Imagine what would happen if I never re-checked it? Digoxin is a very serious drugs. 4 times the prescribed dosage could very potential have fatal effects on the person taking it.
When the pharmacy acknowledged the mistake, I did not make any fuss at all because I believed that SGH has implemented serious controls in the pharmacy and my case was simply just one of the very rare occurrences.
If I made a big fuss, would it produce better results? I'm not sure. At that moment, I knew I didn't want to create more problems for the staff who committed the fault. I believe in giving people chance whenever possible.

I was so shocked that this happened with SGH, so I'd like to take this chance to inform the rest: Try not to trust 100% any pharmacy. Do re-check the drugs given to you.; June 25, 2008 10:40 PM
Raymond T said...: As they like to say... it was an honest mistake... let's move on... :); June 26, 2008 9:27 AM
Falcon said...: You should highlight to the management so they can follow up and see how it went wrong and implement remedial measures. There should be zero defect for this kind of potentially life and death thing. This case is not a matter of giving the person chance. The worst that can happen to this staff is that he or she may be fired, but the worst that can happen to the next patient could very well be his or her loss of life.; June 26, 2008 9:50 AM
fm said...: I agree that mistakes are bound to happen when the immigration officers deal with so many people every day. However, the system should be (and has been) designed with such human errors in mind.

In this case, there were multiple instances where the boarding pass and passport were designed to be verified by different people. The fact that the wrong passport was not discovered by the different levels of checks showed that there was a systemic problem in the way that the immigration officials operated.

It is now important to examine in detail why the operational lapses occurred: perhaps the guards he first met were only supposed to be checking for ticket validity and not for passenger identity, or perhaps all parties involved were just negligent and complacent (as our *dear* MM has suggested before).

But in the end, we can only accept isolated mistakes that resulted from an individual's carelessness. If everyone along the entire process made the mistake, something must be truly wrong.; June 28, 2008 3:56 PM