Timeline on Review of Community Dispute Management Framework

6 Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth when will a timeline on the review of the Community Dispute Management Framework be made available.

The Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai): MCCY leads an inter-agency committee that regularly reviews the Community Dispute Management Framework or CDMF that Mr Yip has referred to, to update and improve measures, such as the referral protocol amongst frontline agencies, mediation and, of course, also legislative recourse.

Our guiding principles continue to be to strengthen neighbourliness to minimise disputes upstream as far as possible; encourage mediation between neighbours to mend relations as far as possible; and, finally, as a measure of last resort, legal recourse for cases which may be intransigent.

Mr Yip and other Members are welcome to share their views and feedback with us and the inter-agency committee on how this framework can be strengthened.

Mr Speaker: Mr Yip.

Mr Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang): Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Minister for his reply. It was reported in the media in April that the CDMF will be reviewed, given the media report of Mr Daniel See, whose neighbour has been harassing him for many, many years and the neighbour has breached three Court orders. If the Ministry cannot share the timelines for the review, can the Minister share some of the efforts of how to make the framework more effective in solving some of these issues?

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: It is not that there is no timeframe that is available. As I have said, this framework is regularly reviewed. And in fact, these are steps that can be taken outside of legislative changes. They can be improved operationally. And, occasionally, when we receive feedback on how this can be done better, we try it out and, if it can be enhanced, then it is instituted immediately.

Some examples of what has been done in recent times, as I have mentioned at the outset, we try as far as possible to bring the process upstream. So, the Community Mediation Centre, or CMC, has been working with frontline officers. And that includes officers from the Singapore Police Force, HDB, Town Councils, NEA, BCA and MSO as well. The CMC works to equip these officers with mediation skills so that they, who encounter the neighbours and the disagreements first-hand, will be able to have some skills to try to resolve that as a measure of first resort.

More than 1,500 Grassroots Leaders have been trained in the past five years on basic mediation as well. Again, on the premise that these are persons who are on the ground, they deal with neighbours, they interact with neighbours on a daily basis and they will be the first responders to any issue that might arise.

We have also enhanced the referral protocols in the context of when a case can be escalated to CMC so that CMC, with its expertise, can intervene upfront and earlier. I keep mentioning intervening upstream and earlier because, very often, the earlier an intervention is made between the parties, the more likely it is that it will result in a successful mediation.

So, these are some steps that we take, together with CMC. I would add also – I forgot to mention this earlier – that CMC also, on occasions, visits residents who fail to respond to a mediation invitation. Members will know that mediation is voluntary. So, you sometimes invite two disagreeable neighbours to a mediation but one side does not want to respond. On occasions when CMC asseses that this case is suitable for mediation and one side has failed to respond, CMC officers and mediators also visit the resident concerned to try to persuade that person to come for mediation.

So, these are the various steps. Some of these steps have been enhanced and taken on board because of feedback given by our grassroots leaders, Members in this House, and we will continue to do so.

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Sir, some of the feedback that I have received is that they do not want to travel all the way to CMC for the mediation. So, I am just wondering whether we can consider doing the mediation maybe at the CC or the RC so that it is nearer to where the complainant and the neighbour is. That way, it might increase the amount of participation in terms of mediation.

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Thank you, Mr Ng. I thought you were going to ask me about second-hand smoke.

Mr Speaker: I thought so, too!

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: But, yes, indeed. I have mentioned earlier that 1,500 grassroots leaders have been trained as mediators. We will grow that pool. The idea really is to decentralise the venue of mediation as far as possible and find a location that is suitable for both parties. We will continue to work on that. If Mr Louis Ng has got any other suggestions on how other facilities within the neighbourhood can be used, we will welcome that as well.