There have been complaints that Kallang Airport is badly managed on account of divers repairs which are long overdue. My experience this morning seems to prove that there are other causes for complaints too.
I had gone to see a friend off to K.L., and while watching the plane take off was approached by a haughty D.C.A. jaga (a guard; sentry) who peremptorily demanded whether I was a passenger.
I told him I wasn't one, whereupon this personification of law and order in Kallang Airport angrily asked what I meant by going up to the plane. As I had done no such thing I asked him what he meant by making such an accusation.
This refusal to bow to his authority irked him so much that I was ordered to leave the airport immediately or he would get a policeman to arrest me.
Needless to say I waited till the plane took off, but I keep wondering what kind of management the airport is under. Apparently jagas are allowed by the Civil Aviation authorities to intimidate visitors to the airport to the point of ordering their arrest should they have the audacity to deny accusations rudely and wrongly hurled at them.
Mahathir bin Mohamad, Singapore
(The Airport Manager replies that, from the letter, Mr. Mahathir was either in or had entered the West Customs Hall, which, since he was not a passenger, he had no right to do. The jaga, in accordance with instructions, would have requested him to leave that area and this instruction appears to have been misinterpreted to mean leave the airport entirely. - Ed S.T.)
(The Straits Times, 28 April 1952)
The Kallang Jaga
With reference to the footnote to my letter regarding the jaga at Kallang (April 28), I would like to state that I was not at any time in the Customs Hall as the airport manager seems to have concluded.
The airport manager has apparently missed the point that the jaga did not object to my being where I was until after I had denied his accusation that I had gone up to the plane. It was only then that he told me to get out of the airport, and there was no mistaking what he meant because he was pointing towards the road.
Mahathir bin Mohamad, Singapore
(The Straits Times, 2 May 1952)
Mahathir bin Mohamad entered the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore in 1947 and graduated in 1953.
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