On 5 July 2016, a Hong Kong Based non-profit news organization FactWire had broken the news of SMRT C151A suffering from multiple defects relating to Chinese-made materials and posted the entire investigative works in YouTube. and most of its claims are subsequently acknowledged by the rail operator SMRT and the transport authorities in Singapore, Land Transport Authority. The entire issue has since generated a huge amount of controversies in Hong Kong and Singapore with some rumors spreading in the Internet as well.