SPEECH BY DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER AND MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS MR WONG KAN SENG AT THE NATIONAL COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMME (CEP) SEMINAR ON SAT 18 APRIL 2009, AT THE ORCHID COUNTRY CLUB, AT 10.00 AM
Colleagues, CEP Community Leaders,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning.
Welcome to the National CEP Seminar this year.
Over the course of three years, the Community Engagement Programme, or CEP, has evolved. Our efforts have grown beyond enhancing public awareness and building networks of trust across the clusters. We have invested much resources and given attention to capability development and, in more recent times, focused on achieving operational readiness.
Building Awareness & Networks of Trust
Through promotional and other activities organized at the cluster level, the concept and purpose of the CEP has become fairly well established within our key stakeholder groups, particularly among the grassroots and religious groups. The range of activities conducted has been substantial and includes events promoting inter-faith/inter-ethnic dialogue, understanding and co-operation. One good example is the training programme organized by the Harmony Centre called ‘Developing Conversation Circles: Building Capacity for Interfaith Dialogue and Engagement’.
I am gratified to see that much of such activities are not top-down but ground-up. Ground initiatives have made the CEP more real and relevant to its audience. For instance, since the Kampung Spirit @ Eunos programme started in 2007, it has continued and recently has started a series of skits conveying the message of communal harmony and performed in schools in the Eunos area.
At the Ang Mo Kio Group Representative Constituency (GRC) and Yio Chu Kang constituency, CEP has generated emergency response plans which address important practical issues, such as having adequately equipped response teams in place. Ang Mo Kio was the first constituency to complete the Constituency CEP Ready Certification, attain the GRC CEP Ready Certification and reproduce a comprehensive GRC Crisis Response Plan in response to any crisis within the GRC.
Capability development
However, something still needs to be centrally directed and coordinated for now. That is capability development. This is because domain knowledge and competency training, which are the key pillars of capability development, are best developed at a single source.
We have made good progress. Among CEP community leaders, more than 110 have undergone training under the Community Engagement Executive Development (or CEED) programme run by the CEP Secretariat and the Home Team Academy. Within the education cluster, the Ministry of Education has customized training for close to 450 CEP leaders who comprise principals, vice-principals and teachers. The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports has, through OnePeople.sg, trained 80 in mediation, organized trust workshops for about 50, and arranged ten visits for about 300 IRCC members. Over at the grassroots cluster, the People’s Association has initiated 19 core team-building programmes, participated by about 330 grassroots CEP leaders. Within the Home Team, about 220 Police and SCDF officers who are involved in working with the community, have taken part in a CEP awareness-building programme.
Media organizations have also joined us under the CEP. Other than the news media who form the Media Emergency Forum under the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, the radio deejays from Mediacorp Radio have been on a CEP training journey with us.
Deejays are at the frontline in a crisis. Listeners will call in to them through phone hotlines and talk-shows that they are familiar with. Indeed, radio deejays are familiar voices that can offer calming advice in times of chaos and uncertainty. Thus far, 75 of them have participated in visits to the Home Team Academy and Civil Defence Academy to deepen their understanding of emergency preparedness and counter-terrorism. We appreciate their involvement and the support of Mediacorp Radio management. We welcome others to come forward and work with us.
Active participation in capability development has been central to the solid growth of the CEP. It has become more than an idea. It has created practical opportunities for interaction which has developed knowledge and competencies.
In turn, the CEP training programme has been enriched by diverse participation. Feedback and views from participants have helped to fine-tune these programmes. To cite two examples – it was from the grassroots group that we learnt of the desire for practical counselling skills. It was also because of a suggestion from the CEED alumni, that the “Train the CEP Trainer” programme was born. Under the programme, identified CEP community leaders who have gone through the CEED programme are trained as CEP trainers to spread the message in his own sphere of influence. The inaugural “Train the CEP Trainer” programme was held recently in February, with 17 participants. Such training programmes create opportunities for networking and over time, build a community of CEP practitioners with common and shared CEP competencies.
We will continue our efforts at the broader level. We also need to prioritise and train a core group in capability development in every domain. This is more realistic and sustainable. If we are able to have such a core group, then in a time of crisis, they will be the primary mobilisers leading at the various levels.
This is the rationale which makes our most ambitious CEP preparedness project, the CEP Ready Certification programme, a practical venture. Through it, we are equipping each constituency with a base-line level of preparedness. Over time, we should see a systematic upgrading of such preparedness in the community. About 30 constituencies have received CEP Ready Certification. The People’s Association is working towards having all 84 constituenciesattaining CEP Ready Certification by the end of this year.
Looking ahead, the People’s Association is working towards a higher level of certification in the CEP Unity Award. This award recognises constituenciesthat have attained CEP Ready Certification and gone further to work closely and actively with Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circle or IRCC members and School Representatives to drive CEP initiatives and organise joint events at the local level. In partnership with the Ministries of Community Development, Youth and Sports, and Education, the People’s Association targets 15 constituencies to attain the CEP Unity Award in this financial year.
Operational Readiness
Everything we are doing to build capabilities and prepare for a crisis is aimed at achieving operational readiness during a real emergency. We will not know for certain if all that we have done or are doing will work in a real crisis. We may well fail. But we must do our best to work out practical response plans and exercise them in a realistic way with the players who will be the mobilisers and participants in a real situation. If we do not, failure is a certainty.
We have started running some basic exercises for the CEP ops management groups across the clusters. This will continue and, over time, we will run a national level exercise when our various structures are more developed.
Extending our Reach
Last year at this seminar, I urged that we pay special attention to reach out to the young. I recalled how this was in fact a recurrent message we heard from grassroots leaders at the very first CEP Workshop which preceded the launch of the CEP by the Prime Minister.
I am pleased to learn that special efforts have been made to target youths. The South East Community Development Council (CDC) has organised an “Introduction to Interfaith Dialogue” meant for youths. In the CampTeen Youth Racial Harmony Ambassadors Programme 2008, youth leaders from 39 secondary schools and youth organisations took part in a residential programme to enhance multi-cultural appreciation and foster deeper interaction amongst the various ethnic groups in Singapore. In camps such as the Heartware CSSP Challenge Camp and the Homefront Security Ambassadors’ Camp, the CEP dimension was injected through talks and projects.
We have also started a “Sg United Journalists’ Club” for students. This is part of the outreach to youths on a more sustained basis. The students are here today, covering this national seminar alongside the Singapore Press Holdings and Mediacorp journalists. Next week, you will be able to surf the Singapore United web portal to view their news reports.
In view of the encouraging response of CEP community leaders to the CEED programme, I have asked the CEP Secretariat to look into a youth version of CEED for the young. Alumni of the Youth CEED programme can choose to continue on to be facilitators at CEP-related camps, such as those organized by the Home Team departments, the Harmony Centre, OnePeople.sg, Community Development Councils (CDCs), or schools.
In our Internet savvy population, concerns and fears can spread very fast through cyberspace and the blogosphere, in addition to the word-of-mouth channel of old. We hope that bloggers, aggregator moderators and twitterers will help to moderate fears in a crisis, just as the radio deejays would do so over the airwaves, and keep our community spirit alive. In a crisis, whatever our views on issues, we must stand together to keep Singapore united.
On our part, the Government will try its best to keep the public informed, with accurate information in a timely manner. We will do so through the traditional news dissemination channels. In addition, we will put out information on multiple platforms and web portals, such as MICA’s www.gov.sg, the crisis page at www.crisis.gov.sg, and the homepages of the respective ministries and government agencies. We have also developed the Singapore United web portal ( at www.SingaporeUnited.SG ) for people to come together, and will put out information on this web portal as well.
Stay Focussed and On Course
During these difficult economic times, the concerns of many people are job security. But we cannot afford to take our eyes off the ball. The threat of terrorism and extremism remains. We would be naïve to think that we are immune to extremism and bigotry. Cases of self-radicalised individuals detected and detained remind us how wrong such an assumption would be.
On the other hand, our various communities have demonstrated a maturity that has distinguished us from others. The balanced response of our inter-faith groups in recent incidents such as the release of the film “Fitna” and the Mumbai attacks last November, illustrates this.
The work of the CEP is never ending. It will always remain a key resource which enhances our national unity, social cohesion and resilience. We have come quite some way in a short time. For this, I thank all of you for the roles and contributions you have played.
Thank you.
Speech by DPM and Minister for Home Affairs Mr Wong Kan Seng at the National CEP Seminar 2009 held on Sat 18 Apr 09 (a video clip)
