HOME TEAM AND IMMIGRATION AND CHECKPOINTS AUTHORITY

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HOME TEAM AND IMMIGRATION AND CHECKPOINTS AUTHORITY:

(Shortage of officers): 3.

Mdm Halimah Yacob asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs what measures have been taken to address the problem of a severe shortage of officers in the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority.

4.

Ms Sylvia Lim:

Ms Sylvia Lim asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs how long will the Government's study on Home Team resources take and whether interim measures are being put in place to ease the situation.

Ms Sylvia Lim asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs how far has the morale of the Home Team been affected by the recent security lapses and what are the implications of this on the security of Singapore.

The Second Minister for Home Affairs (Mr K Shanmugam) (for the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs): Sir, with your leave, if I can take Question Nos. 3, 4 and 5 together?

Mr Speaker: Yes.

Mr Shanmugam: Sir, on 21st July 2008, I had said that the Ministry of Home Affairs has directed that a human factor study be conducted to look at operational fatigue, and the level of workload and resources within the Home Team. The questions raised by Mdm Halimah and Ms Lim on the morale and resource situation in the Home Team can

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be answered by looking at what the study has found so far.

In July 2008, the Ministry of Home Affairs formed a committee ("Committee") comprising in-house psychologists and scientists to study the human factor situation within the Home Team.

That Committee found that the fundamentals in Home Team are generally sound. Officers are committed to their work and they believe that they play an important role in keeping Singapore safe and secure. However, over the years, our officers have had to cope with increased workload, in terms of both sheer volume and complexity in the post-September 11 security climate. While work volume was high, many officers still feel that they can cope adequately with the demands of the work. But, in some areas, the Committee found that officers felt overstretched, strained and stressed. Overtime and extra shift work were perpetually required, and officers had to cancel their leave to return to work. Many even had to give up some of their annual leave to meet the exigencies of service.

The Committee also found that some of the most taxed areas of the Home Team are those that deal with the general public. Unfortunately, the experience of the officers has been that, from time to time, they encounter extremely demanding, unreasonable or even abusive members of the public as they discharge their duties.

In general, the growths in population and traffic at the checkpoints have outstripped manpower growth in the Home Team. In some areas, this has taken its toll on our officers. Apart from the sheer volume increase, the Home Team also had to deal with new areas, such as in casino regulation and counter terrorism; and Terminal 3 and the Budget Terminal have added to the demands. Security coverage for major events, such

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as the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting in 2006 and the ASEAN Summit in 2007 has also been very taxing.

In addition to the increased demands that I have listed, another pressure on manpower in the Home Team is that, in recent years, there have been more resignations due to the economic boom. Pay in the private sector became more attractive. However, the 2007 pay review for the civil service has helped to reduce the outflow.

Ms Lim asked about the impact of the security lapses on the morale of the Home Team and the implications on the security of Singapore. Our officers take pride in their work. They know that Singaporeans expect high standards of them. There was disappointment that lapses occurred and a determination and resolve to do better. But there was also a strongly held view that some of the reactions to the errors were not proportionate. I had, on 21st July, tried to give a sense of how important it is to view security in its complexity and always in its operating context. It is important that we be fair to our officers, even as we expect the best from them.

There has been intense scrutiny and at times harsh comments passed on the Home Team. But our officers are resilient. They remain dedicated to their work and are determined to set things right. Time and again, Home Team officers have performed well and risen to challenges under pressure. DPM Wong made an important speech in his recent National Day Observance. He gave his categorical assurance to Home Team officers that all of us appreciate their situation. He added that the Ministry will maintain a pragmatic balance and proper perspective when assessing their performance, rather than simply focusing on lapses only. Our officers have been greatly encouraged to know this.

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Mdm Halimah and Ms Lim asked what is being done to deal with the resource shortage. So far, we have tried to cope with the increased demands through outsourcing, introducing technological solutions and other such measures. However, in security work, these cannot be total solutions. People are at the centre of any security system and we need enough good officers to do the job.

In this regard, we have instructed the Home Team Departments to step up recruitment. We are also reviewing our employment criteria and job scopes to see if we can accept new sources of manpower in specific areas. For instance, we have already started re-employing retired officers. They are experienced and attuned to the needs of the organisation. If emplaced in the right jobs, they can start contributing straightaway once they are re-employed.

But the fact remains that we will need more resources to cope with the increased demands. And the Ministry of Home Affairs has discussed this with MOF, and MOF has assured the Ministry of Home Affairs of its full support to ensure that the Home Team has adequate resources to meet these demands.

The Committee of psychologists and scientists has also reviewed behavioural science studies that calibrate appropriate manning levels for various types of operational processes. The idea is to find the point where our officers feel sufficiently challenged and operate at peak efficiency, without feeling overwhelmed and fatigued. This is something which we think will be useful and serve as a basis for resource requisition.

The Committee has also done a best practice survey of the measures that can mitigate human errors and recommended

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them to the Home Team Departments. For instance, many industries, such as the US aviation sector, have a near miss reporting system. A near miss is an unplanned event that had the potential to go wrong. Identifying near misses allows problems to be surfaced and improvements to be made early. We are also looking into refining the existing system of "after action reviews" to ensure that mistakes and learning points are transmitted more thoroughly to all the officers on the ground. The Office of Chief Science and Technology Office in the Ministry of Home Affairs has also embarked on a review of system interfaces to make them more user friendly and compensate for human oversight.

In conclusion, Sir, Home Team officers remain dedicated to the mission of keeping Singapore safe and secure. This is reflected in the sacrifices they have made over the years and continue to make every day. I am confident they will rise to meet the challenges ahead.

Ms Sylvia Lim: Sir, the Minister mentioned just now in his answer that attrition among officers has risen due to private market being an alternative career. Has MHA also done any study on push factors that may have caused the officers to resign and what are the key push factors involved? Secondly, Sir, in the Minister's response during the Adjournment Motion at the last sitting, he mentioned the number of overtime hours clocked in by the immigration officers and that came as a surprise to most of us because it seemed quite a large number of overtime hours. Is the Ministry saying that there should actually be a certain number of overtime hours done by the immigration officers and what is the ideal range of overtime hours done or was it something that should have been picked up earlier and perhaps recruitment stepped up earlier?

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Mr Shanmugam: Sir, when we look at the resignation rate for our officers, for example, if you look at the senior officers, it has gone up from 3.2% to 3.7% and that of junior officers have in fact gone down from 3.7% to 2.3%. We will of course prefer fewer resignations but the situation, in broad terms, remains acceptable and we obviously have to compete with the market. I had said that in 2007, it was a booming market and the pay review has helped, and we believe that with redesignation of job scopes, to try and make it even more attractive and more aggressive recruitment campaign, this issue can be tackled.

Secondly, as regards the overtime hours that have been put in, to some extent, as I have tried to explain in my earlier answer, this has been caused by the exigency of the situation. Some of it could have been planned for. A number of events could not be planned for, for example, our checkpoints are beginning to handle so many passengers, particularly the land checkpoints, that they are probably among the busiest in the world. And a number of the requirements, for example, the Woodlands Checkpoints, imposed on our officers cannot be planned for because the episodic demand surges. So it has resulted in our Home Team officers having to be deployed or for us to look carefully at resource allocations to bring officers from the checkpoints which are less busy to the busy areas, and require our officers to do overtime. That is one of the areas that was studied by the Committee that was set up by the team of psychologists.

In general terms, they have found that the stresses and strains within the system are within acceptable limits. But they have identified a few areas where they feel that we are not optimising the contact point between the stress that is necessary to make any job interesting and, at the same time, making sure that

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the officers are not over-stressed, and we will look at those.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo: Sir, two questions for the Minister.

(1) In augmenting the Ministry's manpower stock, is the Minister also looking into tapping the back-to-work housewives, the programme that was mentioned earlier by the Minister for Manpower?

(2) Of the overtime hours chalked up, I am just wondering whether these OT hours are being evenly distributed across the staff strength of the Home Team or are they attributed to just dedicated teams of people?

Mr Shanmugam: Sir, I do not think the Home Team discriminates against housewives, back-to-work or otherwise. But the requirements under the demands of the Home Team uniformed and non-uniformed officers are quite stringent. We will look at all available sources and I cannot give a guarantee targeted at specific sectors of the people who are employable.

As regards the second question as to whether the overtime is restricted to or categorised within specific departments, again, when we are dealing with the thousands of officers that we have in the Home Team spread across so many departments, I think it is difficult to generalise. There will always be areas where overtime would be more, eg, in Immigration, and there would be others where overtime would be less. But the exigencies of work in the Home Team are such that you would not expect routine office hours anyway, regardless of where you work in the Home Team.

Mdm Halimah Yacob: Sir, the Minister said that, according to the psychologists who did the study, the stress level is manageable. But according to the feedback I get from the officers, the

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stress is actually very stressful. So I would like to ask the Minister's comment on that.

My second question is whether there is a headcount freeze in the civil service. Is that headcount freeze applicable to officers in the ICA such that it affects the staffing requirement as to how many staff can be employed in ICA?

My next question is this: The Minister mentioned that the pull factor seems to be a very strong factor for the high resignation rate in the ICA. Will the Ministry be considering reviewing the terms and conditions of the ICA officers to make it more attractive, since their job scope, according to the Minister's description just now, seems to have expanded considerably compared to the past?

Mr Shanmugam: I thank Mdm Halimah for her three questions.

First, I did not quite say that the Committee found that there were no stresses and strains. To be precise, I said that, in general, they found that the stresses and strains and the job demands people felt were acceptable. But there were specific areas where they felt that officers were overstretched and over-stressed beyond what they should be, and we are looking at it. So, it may simply be that Mdm Halimah's feedback comes from those who are indeed over-stressed, and we accept that there are parts which are. That was the whole purpose of doing the study professionally, and we are looking at the findings very carefully.

Second, headcount freeze, I think, applies across the board. The Ministry of Home Affairs has not been an exception to those policies which keep the entire Government machinery lean and tight. However, within the framework of what

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has been found, we would obviously have to go back and see the areas where both the complexity of the job has vastly increased and where the volume surge has been such that it is not just quantitative but qualitative, ie, that it is so increased that you do need substantially more people. But do not misunderstand me. The number of people employed in the Home Team has, in fact, increased over a period of time. But the demands on the Home Team probably have outstripped even that increase.

Third, on the question on pull factors and high resignation rate, again, I do not want to be misunderstood. In fact, I thought I said that the percentages were at three-over percent. And within the framework of any organisation, you would expect those sorts of percentages. But we want to reduce that even more because our officers get highly trained, they become very attractive to the private sector, particularly in a booming economy and, obviously, having trained them and chosen people who can meet our stringent criteria and qualities, we do not want to let them go. But this is a free market, and we have to ensure that our terms are such that they would stay with us rather than going into the private sector.

Ms Eunice Elizabeth Olsen (Nominated Member): Sir, actually my question is similar to Mdm Halimah's. I had wanted to ask whether the cut in headcount in the civil service four years ago by the Ministry of Finance had actually had an impact on the shortage of staff at MHA.