Reply by Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen to Parliamentary Question on Tender for English Language Course for Foreign Officer

Mrs Lina Chiam: To ask the Minister for Defence (a) whether a tender was called for the provision of an English Language course for one People's Liberation Army officer; (b) if so, what was the tender amount awarded to the education provider; and (c) under what circumstances was the tender awarded.

Dr Ng Eng Hen: Madam Speaker, Member has asked specific queries about the course which MINDEF tendered for. Before I answer her specific questions, I think it'll be useful for Members to understand a little bit more about why militaries exchange officers. And for obviously good reasons, it's very useful for SAF to send our officers to attend the staff college courses of other militaries and vice versa. It will establish very good relationships with other countries' militaries and you'll understand their perspectives. And when incidents occur, they can be very useful resource persons. As it occurred, for example, in the Indian Ocean tsunami, where we had our own officers who had gone to Indonesia, and when we were on the ground, we could quickly connect with the officers there. And so for these reasons, militaries all over have for many years exchanged officers to each other's courses to establish better ties. But one of the problems in doing this is, of course, language of instruction. For example, if we send our SAF officers to Indonesia, not all of them can speak Bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia is actually not that difficult. For example, if we send them to Thailand, or in Japan, and the language of instruction is in that country's language. For a year, language proficiency is important for them to be able to benefit from the course. Vice versa, for some foreign officers who attend SAF's military courses, we've to help them gain language proficiency so that they can benefit from their time here. And for this particular officer which the Member asked for, we required a personalised 360-hour course. One-on-one, 360-hour course, is standard to get them to the level of proficiency conducted by a qualified English instructor. When our SAF officers go to other countries, they do the same in terms of spending some months to gain language proficiency. As I said, such as in Bahasa Indonesia.

So for this purpose, a 360-hour course, personalised, one-on-one, conducted by a qualified English language instructor, MINDEF put out a tender on government’s e-procurement portal, Government Electronic Business (GeBiz), for this language course. We had about five or six people, companies, who replied. The contract was awarded to the lowest offer that met the requirements and this was the amount of $25,900, which worked out to about $70 an hour. All this was in strict compliance with government's regulations.