Recruitment of Singaporeans in Police Force

56 Dr Chia Shi-Lu asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) how is the recruitment drive to attract more Singaporeans to the Police Force progressing; (b) how many have joined in the last two years; (c) what is the retention rate; and (d) whether there are plans to expand the number of Neighbourhood Police Posts.

Mr K Shanmugam: In the last two years, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) recruited close to 1,300 Police Officers. The retention rate has been stable, with an annual resignation rate of 2%.

There are, however, limits to how far we can sustain this pace of recruitment. Like the rest of the Civil Service, the SPF headcount is subject to a manpower management framework. The rate of recruitment will slow down over the next few years, in line with the slower growth in the overall local workforce.

Given the many new demands on SPF, whether it is to deal with the terrorist threat, cybercrime or transnational organised crime, it is important that we continue to recruit the best officers that we can within the manpower cap. It is also important that we make the best use of the Police Officers that we have by developing new concepts of operations, make smarter use of technology and invest in the training and development of our officers.

We are currently in the midst of redesigning our Neighbourhood Police Posts (NPPs) as part of the new Community Policing System. We are studying how we can better use technology at NPPs to provide round-the-clock automated services for residents, while allowing us to redeploy Police Officers away from NPPs to more critical areas, such as patrols in the neighbourhoods. We will explore how to better position NPPs as key nodes and rallying points for our community volunteer programmes, such as SGSecure. There are currently no plans to increase the total number of NPPs but there may be relocation of some NPPs as the population shifts to new housing estates.