President of HomeTeamNS,
Associate Professor Faishal Ibrahim,
Members of the Board of Governors,
Management Committee,
and my ex-colleague,
Ho Peng Kee,
HomeTeamNS Volunteers,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Introduction
1. Very happy to be here with you today to join you at the 6th HomeTeamNS Awards.
2. Tonight, we recognise 60 deserving awardees. They have made significant contributions to HomeTeamNS.
Tribute To Home Team National Servicemen
3. We have said this many times. Our Home Team NSmen play an extremely crucial role in the Home Team.
4. You work and train next to our Regular officers. You perform many of the same duties - you patrol the streets, you fight crime, you respond to fires, you deal with medical emergencies, you deal with a variety of incidents, and much more.
5. Your contributions have helped to keep the Home Team working well and to keep Singapore safe and secure.
6. Our Home Team NSmen continue to very strongly believe in the relevance and necessity of National Service.
7. For the past three years (2021, 2022, and 2023), post-In-Camp Training surveys showed that more than 85% of Home Team NSmen felt proud to serve NS with the Home Team, and they found their NS journey meaningful.
8. This very strong support of our NSmen is extremely important because – and as I said earlier – without our NSmen, it would be very difficult for Home Team to carry out its duties.
9. For example, Home Team deals with a wide variety of challenges - scams, drugs, terrorism. We talk about it, we deal with it.
10. For example, just yesterday, I announced that two more very young people, self-radicalised, one a 15-year-old girl, the other a 17-year-old boy. They were dealt with under the Internal Security Act. The girl was issued with a Restriction Order, the boy was detained.
11. One, the girl was thinking of having engagements with online extremist, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). She wanted to go off to Syria, do a bad thing. She was chatting with a chat-bot actually. She wanted to get married and raise a family, and fight and die. She wasn’t that far gone, so we didn’t detain but we gave her a framework of orders to keep her on the right journey.
12. The boy, far-right extremist, East Asian supremacist, who wanted to kill as many Muslims as possible. He targeted mosques in Jurong. He was inspired by Brenton Tarrant, who committed the horrific Christchurch murders in New Zealand, and he wanted to kill more than 100 Muslims in the mosques so that he can outdo Brenton. And he tried getting guns in Thailand, in other places. Thankfully, he didn’t get to it, but we decided that in this case, he needed to be actually detained.
13. Now we are trying to see how we look at the expertise of our NSmen and how we can call upon that and better deploy them.
14. For example, we look at their expertise and we deploy on that basis. We deploy them to roles that will tap on the skills and knowledge of their civilian professions. These areas of expertise include medicine, engineering, digital media, psychology. So we will see how we can expand this to more areas in the future.
Recognising And Supporting Our National Servicemen
15. We deeply appreciate the contributions of our NSmen.
16. To show our appreciation, the Government has recently disbursed the NS LifeSG credits in November last year. Increased the monthly NS rank allowance that will take effect on 1 July this year.
17. HomeTeamNS, through its clubhouses and activities, is another way we recognise our NSmen’s contributions, to try and build a stronger HT community.
18. This year marks a milestone because we are celebrating our 20th anniversary.
19. Over these 20 years, two decades, HomeTeamNS has grown from strength to strength in serving the Home Team NS community.
20. We now have two state-of-the-art clubhouses, here in Khatib and Bedok Reservoir, and a third is being built in Tengah.
21. The Khatib Clubhouse and Bedok Reservoir Clubhouse, these two, have been extremely well-received. They have generated a strong sense of pride among our HT community.
22. In fact, this is one of the things that I looked at. I looked at the plans for the original clubhouses, and I said, “we scrap everything” and our aim must be to have the state-of-the-art, the best. Some of you who have been involved in the process would know, I said the same is not going to do. We need to move up significantly, and it’s got to be comparable to the best that is available out there. And that’s how this clubhouse came out first, and then Bedok – we got the beautiful chalets overlooking the water. We managed to get that land, and now Tengah will be a very strong product.
23. Last year, HomeTeamNS achieved a 90% satisfaction rating from over 6,000 Ordinary Members who participated in the annual member's engagement survey.
24. That is a huge increase. If you look at 2018, that was a 22 percentage points increase. First survey in 2018, then six years later, after these clubhouses have been opened.
25. The Tengah Clubhouse, which should be ready – not so soon, it will take some years – it will be ready by 2031, but the theme will be “the Great Outdoors”.
26. Its facilities will include an outdoor adventure centre, villas, an indoor children’s playground, sheltered futsal courts available for use 24/7.
27. What HomeTeamNS has done is to use technology to make it easier for members to access their services and promotions. So almost 90% of members have now downloaded the HomeTeamNS app. In that group, about 90% in a survey last year said they were highly satisfied with the usefulness of the HomeTeamNS app.
28. The theme for HomeTeamNS’s 20th anniversary celebration is “Honouring Service Through Generations”.
29. There will be a year-long celebration. It will comprise many events, many promotions for NSmen and their families.
30. They will include a Roving Exhibition. This roving exhibition will go across Clubhouses. It will showcase HomeTeamNS's history and future plans. There will be a Charity Dinner to be held in November that we hope will rally our community to give back to society.
New HomeTeamNS Initiatives To Serve Nsmen
31. We will continuously try to improve the offerings to the members.
32. In July 2023, there was a comprehensive review and part of it was to gather views on how HomeTeamNS can continue to remain relevant, given that the lifestyles and interests of our NSmen are changing. More than 4,000 members, volunteers and staff gave their ideas and their feedback.
33. One of the recommendations that we have accepted and will roll out this year is the Life Membership Package. Now, you have the annual memberships –compared with that, the Life Membership package means that the NSmen only need to pay a one-time fee, and they will enjoy the benefits for life. More details will be provided by HomeTeamNS.
HomeTeamNS Awards
34. Now, HomeTeamNS will not be what it is today without the dedication, the support of its volunteers and partners.
35. The volunteers and partners contribute in many different ways. They offer their time, their expertise, they sit on various committees, they provide monetary as well as non-monetary support for a variety of programmes.
36. Tonight, HomeTeamNS will appoint 145 members to these committees. And really, we thank every one of them for stepping up to serve.
37. We will also be recognising volunteers and corporate partners who have made exemplary contributions.
(a) 43 volunteers will receive the Long Service Award,
(b) 15 will receive the Meritorious Award,
(c) Two corporate partners are receiving the Friends of HomeTeamNS Award.
38. Let me just share with you some details relating to two of the recipients.
Long Service Awards
39. First, Mr. Lionel Chai. He is receiving the 25-Year Long Service Award.
40. His association with HomeTeamNS started with the Singapore Police Association for National Servicemen (SPANS).
41. Over his long and distinguished service, he has served on various committees, including the Board of Governors.
42. He has a passion for health and fitness, and that has made him a strong proponent in organising healthy, active lifestyle activities.
43. He was a pioneer member of the Regular Exercise Active Lifestyle (R.E.A.L.) Committee. He and his team planned and organised the inaugural REAL Run in 1996. That set the stage for the REAL Run that is organised annually today, and is extremely well-received.
Meritorious Awards
44. Next, I would like to mention Colonel (NS) Jahan De Silva. He is receiving the Platinum Meritorious Award.
45. Jahan has been contributing actively to the Management Committee, since 2017. Today, he chairs the Information and Technology Committee.
46. He has played a very big part in transforming HomeTeamNS’s infrastructure network and capabilities.
47. His strategic oversight was important in operationalising IT for an entire new generation of HomeTeamNS Clubhouses at Khatib and Bedok Reservoir.
48. We thank Lionel, we thank Jahan, we thank every one of our award winners, for your commitment, for your contributions, to HomeTeamNS.
Conclusion
49. Let me conclude by thanking all past and present HT NSmen. You have made significant contributions in making Singapore one of the safest cities in the world. All of HomeTeamNS’s volunteers and partners, also, we thank them for making HomeTeamNS’s achievements possible over the many years.
50. Congratulations again to HomeTeamNS for your 20th anniversary.
51. Thank you very much.
