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SINGAPORE : Some 260 officers will receive the Home Team Achievement Awards on Friday for playing pivotal roles in five key projects.
The Home Team was kept busy in a year of major events - such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. The call of duty also came in unexpected situations like the H1N1 pandemic.
There was also the work of keeping Singapore safe and smooth-running - such as improving traffic flow at Woodlands Checkpoint, strengthening security at high-risk operational areas and building Singapore's security framework.
During the H1N1 crisis, which broke out in April last year, about 140 officers worked round the clock.
Besides having to sort out coordination issues with multiple agencies, the team also enforced containment measures like temperature screenings and health alert notices.
ASP Lim Kok Ghee, Senior Operations Planning Executive, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, said: "During this crucial period, some of our officers were infected with H1N1 so they're also under home quarantine.
"So basically, what ICA did was we educated ICA officers to observe personal hygiene and to be socially responsible to prevent the spread of H1N1."
Despite the tremendous strain on manpower to carry out contact tracing work, they managed to overcome the problem.
Another team that was responsible for the APEC meetings cited coordination as a key challenge.
SP Jarrod Pereira, Deputy Director, Operations, Singapore Police Force, said: "The fact that we had 21 leaders and 63 ministers in Singapore at the same time was really unprecedented.
"We had a lot of challenges, whether in terms of resources, moving them from point to point, or even securing them at the venues itself."
To get around this problem, the team made sure they had many exercises with all the agencies to iron out issues. The fact that APEC was such a large-scale event and the first time Singapore was hosting it made it even more difficult for the team.
Major Lawrence Seng, Head Ops, 1st CD Division, Singapore Civil Defence Force, said: "Basically, we're responsible for the mass casualty kind of scenarios. So we had to plan for the event itself, and to be (on) standby over the period of time.
"Coincidentally, that was also the period (where) we were planning for the National Day and the F1 2009 as well. So all our officers were greatly stretched and many of them have to sacrifice their time and leave to stand by for this event.
The Home Team Achievement Awards were introduced in 1996 to give recognition to outstanding officers and generate awareness of the importance of teamwork.
The awards are also given out to officers who embody the Home Team spirit and to outstanding sectors that have responded to challenges efficiently and effectively, as well as those that have implemented sporting intiatives.
- CNA/al
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