CONSTRUCTION BRIGADE (Progress report on National Service trainees)

Encik Abbas Abu Amin asked the Minister for Home Affairs, on the progress report on National Service trainees in the Construction Brigade, how many of them continue to work in the construction industry after completion of their full-time training.

Dr Lee Boon Yang (for the Minister for Home Affairs): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Construction Brigade (CB) Scheme was introduced in December 1981 with the objective of building up a regular pool of National Servicemen who are trained in the various construction trades to meet Civil Defence needs in the event of an emergency. It was revised in December 1985 to improve the standard of discipline and trade training for those enlisted under the Scheme.

To date, a total of 10,205 CD National Servicemen have been enlisted under the CB Scheme. Currently, there are 2,488 full-time servicemen.

The performance of the CB men has improved considerably as more have been sent to the Construction Industry Training Centre (CITC) for training. The number of servicemen qualifying at the multi-skill level has increased from 26.7% in 1986 to 42.6% in 1989. Correspondingly, the percentage of servicemen trained only at the general worker level has dropped from 23.9% in 1986 to 9.8% in 1989. This reflects the effort of the Singapore Joint Civil Defence Force in motivating our servicemen to take their training more seriously and to upgrade themselves to higher skill levels.

The response of contractors is positive, with some even introducing incentive schemes to reward and motivate the servicemen deployed to them, while others have appointed the National Servicemen to be their site-checkers.

The Construction Brigade servicemen have also shown substantial improvement in discipline. The absenteeism rate at worksites at one time used to be more than 30%. Over the last three years, this has improved under the revised scheme to an absenteeism rate of 14.2% in 1987, 5.4% in 1988 and 4.2% in 1989.

A recent survey of Construction Brigade reservists shows that about 22% of them remain in the construction industry.