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SINGAPORE : Singapore's armed forces have been sending cadet officers overseas as an essential part of training to build their confidence.
Officers are sent to the jungles of the Temburong district in Brunei several times a year for their orientation training.
Before their jungle training, officers are required to undergo a fitness regime. It involves a detailed assessment on the officer's medical history as well as other medical checks. Trainees also go through endurance runs and other physical conditioning activities.
There are also thorough briefings and safety checks on equipment used in the training. Medics will also check on the trainees midway through their jungle survival course to assess their mental and physical well-being.
An eight-day jungle survival course in Brunei will involve an air crash simulation and is carried out in three stages.
The first stage is the preparation training where officers are briefed on jungle survival skills like how to trap water, how to skin a quail and identify edible plants.
Then comes the part where trainees learn to "live off the land". At this stage, trainees are dropped off in the jungle and trained to survive on their own for three days.
The third stage is navigation training where cadets, in small groups of 6 to 7, embark on a 4-kilometre march back to camp.
It was apparently at the third stage that 20-year-old Office Cadet Clifton Lam Jia Hao collapsed while undergoing jungle orientation training in Brunei. A pilot trainee with the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), he died one-and-a-half hours after he collapsed, despite efforts by medics to resuscitate him en route to the hospital. - CNA /ls
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