One of a Kind (2nd Edition)

SETTING UP SAFTI

FOUR

I. LOCATING SAFTI

It can be said that the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute (SAFTI) had its origins

in Jurong Town Primary School in early February 1966, in a district then called Taman

Jurong. The school was the base camp for the First Instructors’ Preparatory Course, which

commenced on 15

February and ended on 7

May. It was also the site from which then

Lieutenant Kirpa Ram Vij oversaw the build-up of the administration of the establishment

that was still without a name, but referred to as Jurong School. He was assisted by staff

picked from the Singapore Military Forces and the school had among other departments,

an Orderly Room run by a Chief Clerk, then Staff Sergeant (later Direct Commission

Lieutenant, promoted to Captain) Steven Ng Chwee Seang.

Jurong Town Primary School

was also the venue of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test which the applicants for the first

intake took and from where they departed for Pasir Laba for the physical fitness test.

Only a handful, if any, of approximately 300 enlistees, who reported to Beach Road on 1

June, 1966, if any, could have known where they would be spending that night. The rest

blithely imagined that the people who were managing their affairs knew precisely what they

were about, within well-defined parameters. On hindsight, it is clear that on enlistment day

the whole business of creating a training establishment for officer cadets was still a work

in progress, undertaken one step at a time. There must have been some sort of planning

guidance at the MID level that covered the next few steps, a sort of rudimentary critical

path framework drawn up among the senior planners at MID, the Advisors and Lieutenant-

Colonel (LTC) Vij, (recently triple-promoted) Director, Jurong School. The immediate

issues would have been the formalities of enlisting the applicants, the logistics of housing,

equipping and feeding the enlistees and their minders, and the schedule of activities for

the couple of weeks just ahead. Being in the context of a military institution (and thereby

having a penchant for ironing out ambiguities), a lot of effort may have been expended, with

varying degrees of success, to pin down these issues over the two months or so before the

first intake for SAFTI reported to Beach Road.

The overstretched quartermaster cell inherited from the SMF, immediate precursors of the

Singapore Armed Forces, must have had its work cut out to source and stock up uniforms,

field equipment, weapons and ammunition, transportation, signal sets, the minutiae of a

military establishment, accounting for each nut and bolt. One Lieutenant Hamid Khan,

who had earned a Queen’s Quartermaster Commission, would have been very busy under

the piratical guidance of Mr. Ong Kah Kok, Director, Logistics. Director of Manpower,

Mr. Herman Hochstadt, having already netted trainees for several successive intakes and,

SETTING UP SAFTI