Speech by Minister for Defence, Dr Ng Eng Hen, at the MINDEF Volunteers' Dinner 2013

Minister of State for Health and Manpower, Dr Amy Khor,
Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Dr Maliki,
Permanent Secretaries,
Chief of Defence Force,
Service Chiefs,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good evening. Tonight is a simple way of giving our heartfelt thanks for your personal contributions to our national security and defence. There are also some new members that we want to welcome tonight to join a total of about 300 volunteers who sit on our main advisory boards and committees. Your individual expertise and your help are invaluable to us because for the SAF to be able to mount a strong defence, requires more than just military capabilities.

Need for a Strong Defence

I am sharing with you my woes when I said that MINDEF is a large ministry. We are very mindful that we are the recipient of the largest proportion of the government revenues and we are always mindful that we need to spend each defence dollar prudently so that we can build a capable and effective SAF. That is our mission. In terms of people, the SAF is made up of NSmen from all walks of life and there are many slices of Singapore stories that go on any given day about the SAF because we basically take all males for two years of their lives. For the SAF to be effective, we have to understand the aspirations of the younger generation and manage their aspirations. As commanders, you have to face the aspirations, social backgrounds, religious backgrounds, needs, and you need to gel them together as one fighting force so they have the right values and motivation, basically to believe that Singapore is worth protecting and our way of life needs to be protected. It is not an easy task because we have about 40,000 NSFs, and about 180,000 NSmen performing their ICTs annually. Work pressures have gone up. More people during their NS liable years are travelling and all those of you who are working and travelling much more. We are getting more productive and companies are downsizing. If you can afford to go away for long period of time, people will wonder whether they need you or not. That is true and that is the way we have moved our industries so that we are very lean and people multi-task, and MINDEF is mindful of that.

Important Roles that Volunteers Play

As volunteers, you help us reach out to NSmen and advise MINDEF in building and running the SAF, a complex organisation supposed to meet the spectrum of challenges both in peacetime and during conflicts. We need your individual expertise and professional insights to respond to a variety of issues, particularly in the area of medicine, law, management, music and the sciences. Your advice and inputs help us to be more responsive to the needs of NSmen as well as to strengthen our governance. You will remember when we had this year in Parliament when I had to explain the safety mishaps. We had two - a number of deaths from two incidents. And critical during this juncture, is to be able to give confidence to the public that there are volunteers who are outside the system but able to provide the objective inputs to give the public the confidence that what is wrong will be set right and that there is a thorough investigation. Many of you are subject matters experts who can validate MINDEF/SAF's practices and benchmark us against industry best practices because MINDEF and the SAF, unlike other militaries elsewhere, we want to be a progressive organisation, one that you can say we have the best practices and I challenged my commanders within the SAF whether you can have the best human resource or man management system.

We have established two new advisory boards last year, the SAF Respiratory Medicine Specialist Advisory Board and the Architectural Advisory Board. These two new advisory boards will help us establish best practices in respiratory medicine, simple things like how far can NSmen with asthma train, especially when one in five Singaporeans have some history of asthma. Just as important as the inputs you provide to MINDEF and the SAF as volunteers, is the key role you play as advocates for a strong SAF in the community. As respected professionals and community leaders, you shape public opinion and uphold the integrity of the system. For example, ACCORD members regularly engage the public to hear their views and feed these back to MINDEF. Because you understand us, you can help to explain the defence considerations when we formulate and implement new policies and programmes. Others here assess make-up pay claims, you help us decide on applications for deferments and disruptions and these are delicate matters. I see the letters. The companies wrote to me directly saying they have a big contract, there are only ten staff in the company as such they need this person. Sometimes, the problem is that there are many such companies and then we have to decide. We always say that NS commanders must be able to make those decisions because we hold them accountable. Because we have you as volunteers, it provides the added assurance that their appeals are handled with objectivity and fairness. You have done a lot of work and I want to thank you as I said, a simple thank you tonight and we are always very happy when the State recognises your contributions.

This year, two of our volunteers are recognised for their efforts and have received National Day Awards. Mr Tan Cheng Hye is currently Advisor to SAFRA Punggol, which will be ready by 2015. Mr Tan was also Chairman of the SAFRA Toa Payoh and Jurong Executive Committees, and was a member of the SAFRA Review Change Management Committee and RECORD IV. For his outstanding service over the years, Mr Tan was conferred the Public Service Star (BBM) this year. The second recipient is Professor Ong Yong Yau and many of you know him. He has been helping build up SAF's medical services for almost 20 years, since 1995. As a member of the SAF Medical Advisory board and the SAF Respiratory Medicine Specialist Advisory Board, he helped review the SAF Medical System in 2012. For his invaluable contributions, Professor Ong was conferred the Public Service Medal (PBM) this year.

We are deeply grateful for all our volunteers. Through your selfless service, you have strengthened the SAF as a system and as an organisation. You strengthened National Service, and that is never a trivial consideration. As Defence Minister, it is my job to see what happens outside Singapore but apart from the threats, I also look at how many countries have been able to sustain National Service and the number of countries is dwindling. Each time one country drops, it scares me a little. This is very hard to sustain but we have been able to sustain National Service because we have been very focused on maintaining the principles of equity, fairness and meritocracy. We cannot do that without volunteers like you. We open our system for you because sometimes when things go wrong and if you do not understand the military considerations, you are able to make proposals which are applicable to civilian life. We need that touch, that understanding and everytime we put you in, you tell us what needs to be done and if it is doable, we will do it. So never underestimate how you are able to help us to maintain this. You serve as an inspiration to others and as role models. 

Committee to Strengthen National Service

Many of you would have been aware that we have continued and stepped up our engagements because we believe that even if this generation is assured that there is a commitment to defence, we need to build it for the next generation. That is key and we have established a Committee to Strengthen National Service (CSNS) earlier this year to find ways to motivate National Servicemen, to help this generation articulate their aspirations for security and defence. We want to strength social support to better recognise them. Over the past few months, you would have read about the various engagements through our Focus Group Discussions. I am very thankful to the members from the CSNS.

Based on the feedback thus far, there has been strong support for NS. We left it open-ended. I was almost prepared to accept a public response that say I am less committed but we didn't find that to be so. In fact, the response is can we do more? This worries me a little bit but that is a good response and some of the responses are whether we can open up more opportunities for Singaporeans, including women, to participate actively in Singapore's defence. One suggested way to do this is for the SAF to expand its volunteer scheme beyond NSmen to allow more to contribute to Singapore's defence. I think this is a positive step, and in keeping with the spirit which you tonight embody in contributing to our defence and security for many years. The CSNS will seriously consider the suggestions to allow volunteers to play a bigger role in our defence.

Conclusion

In closing, let me once again express my deepest appreciation to all our volunteers who have contributed to building up the SAF to what it is today - a modern, capable and decisive force. I thank you for your dedication, commitment and support for defence. Thank you and have a pleasant evening.