FactWire report claim. LTA also stated that it "considered that the contractor was able to quickly identify the cause of the defects, take responsibility and carry out the necessary action promptly to rectify the fault" and gave the consortium the "highest quality score" as the basis for awarded them subsequent train contracts (C151C and CT251) in 2015 despite the defects were discovered since. The contract for C151B trains had been awarded to the same consortium in 2012, prior to the knowledge about the faults being known. On 9 July 2016, a Singapore-based alternative media republished a CaiXin Online article originally published in March 2016 by the China Railway Construction Corporation blaming the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation for the decline of quality standards. According to the former, 60% of all railway incidents in China and 90% of all railway disruptions during 2015 can be attributed to CRRC manufactured trains not meeting quality or maintenance standards, with 210 instances resulting in death or injuries. The equivalent of the English article is also provided by CaiXin Online as well. Political furor in Singapore The incident became a political issue as opposition politician Gerald Giam from the Workers' Party questioned the transport authority for awarding the consortium a "top quality score", among other statements in his Facebook page. The party later issued a second statement that their MPs would file 17 questions in Parliament about the issue. Official statement from Transport Minister On 12 July 2016, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan released an extensive statement about this issue. These are the key points that Khaw have made: The reason that this incident was not reported earlier in 2013 is because going public for something that was "not a major event" might have caused unnecessary panic to the layman since any engineers would have known that not all cracks are the same. However, he admitted that sometimes routine matters can be spun out of control, just like in this incident. Land Transport Authority would have consulted with Ministry of Transport and go public if this incident happens to be a safety issue OR affected train capacity even if the incident does not affect safety because they need to explain the slowing down on the goal of increasing mass rail transit capacity.In this case given that only one train is sent for rectification at a time, the train availability is not affected at all since