Five correction directions issued over remarks by SDP's Paul Tambyah
Five correction directions have been issued to the National University of Singapore Society (NUSS), Channel News Asia (CNA), The Online Citizen Asia (TOC) and New Naratif, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said in a joint statement yesterday.
The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office was directed to issue these correction directions by the alternate authority for the Minister of Manpower.
It is the first time a mainstream media outlet has been issued a correction direction by the Pofma Office.
The directions were issued for the following:
- A video titled "NUSS Pre-General Election Forum 2020", published by NUSS on Friday on YouTube;
- A Facebook post and video titled "Dr Paul Tambyah reveals MOM's role in outbreak of Covid-19 within dormitories", published by TOC on Saturday;
- • A video titled "TOC GE2020 Livestream - Afternoon session 2 July 2020", published by TOC on Thursday;
- An online article titled "GE2020: Focus on public health could have been lost in March amid talk of early election, suggests SDP's Paul Tambyah", published by CNA on Saturday;
- And an audio recording titled "An Interview with Dr Paul Tambyah", published by New Naratif yesterday.
These materials contained statements by Singapore Democratic Party chairman Paul Tambyah that are false, MOH and MOM said in their joint press release.
At issue were the following statements by Dr Tambyah:
- MOM's e-mail advisory to employers on testing of migrant workers was made without the advice of public health medical professionals;
- MOM's advisory stated that employers would lose their work pass privileges if they took their workers for Covid-19 testing;
- And MOM actively discouraged the testing of workers.
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