Good morning

CDC Mayors and Chairmen

Grassroots leaders

Home Team and People’s Association officers

Ladies and Gentlemen

The first Community-Police Seminar last year received good response. At that seminar, the concept, rationale and workings of the Community Safety & Security Programme - or CSSP for short was explained. The grassroots leaders also shared with the participants the several successful CSSP projects which they had initiated.

This year, the seminar has included the other Home Team (HT) agencies -- the Singapore Civil Defence Force, the Prisons Department and the Central Narcotics Bureau. There is also a significant increase in the number of participants at this seminar, 1,000 this year, up more than three-fold from last year. This means more grassroots leaders and officers can benefit from this seminar.

The format of this year’s seminar allows participants the opportunity to exchange ideas in small groups to share best practices on CSSP and to discuss the challenges faced in CSSP implementation. Your active participation in the small group discussions will help generate more ideas that will benefit more residents and the community.

CSSP is a major initiative of the People's Association, the Community Development Councils (or CDCs) and the Home Team to jointly involve and mobilise the community in sharing responsibility for its own safety and security needs. The programme started before the Singapore 21 vision of ‘Active Citizenship’, and the self-help concept of the CDCs. The objective of CSSP supports the Singapore 21 vision and the CDC’s objective of community bonding.

Under the CSSP, citizens help to identify safety and security concerns within their local community, as well as work out and implement their own solutions to these problems. Thus the CSSP approach not only gives citizens a say in what, or how, safety and security issues within their community should be tackled, but also enables them to play a direct and active part in finding solutions. This active involvement in community safety and security issues is the essence of the S21 concept of Active Citizenship, and an excellent demonstration of what an active civil society can achieve. In fact, a recent Public Perception Survey commissioned by the Singapore Police Force showed that the public want to take more responsibility on security matters.

As you go about being active citizens and being involved in CSSP, you are not alone in your efforts. You have my full support in your efforts to make Singapore a safer and more secure home. I have taken a direct interest in making the CSSP work for Singapore by chairing a Community Involvement Steering Committee that gives direction to and oversees the CSSP. This Committee includes all the stakeholders from the Home Team as well as community representatives.

I have also kept a close watch over the progress of CSSP implementation. I am especially pleased to note that barely two years since the CSSP was first announced in October 1997, all the nine CDCs have launched CSSPs in their districts. Much progress has been made.

At the CDC level, the Care & Support Programmes for offenders, and traffic accident victims and their families were first introduced by Sembawang - Hong Kah CDC in 1998. The objective of these Care & Support Programmes is to help maintain the quality of life of these families and to prevent their children from becoming juvenile delinquents during their moments of crisis. We also have the Care & Support Programme by Central Singapore CDC and Bukit Timah CDC to help the elderly and those who have fallen prey to crime. Another well-received CSSP initiative is the Safe Drive Zone Scheme first implemented by Ang Mo Kio-Cheng San CDC. It involves the community in improving the safety of road users in certain areas.

For CSSP at the Citizens’ Consultative Committee (CCC) level, I would like to highlight the Home Safety & Security Training course jointly conducted by Serangoon CCC and the Civil Defence Executive Committee (CDEC) in December last year for the domestic foreign maids in Serangoon. The organising committee received support from the employers in allowing their maids to participate in the training session. The course benefited the foreign maids by imparting to them, the knowledge and training to deal with emergencies when their employers are not at home.

There are also several good CSSP initiatives implemented at the RC level. The launch of the "Buku Box" by Bukit Panjang RC is one such CSSP initiative that addresses the safety and security concerns of the RC zone. Another good CSSP initiative involves residents and volunteers of Bukit Purmei Estate coming together to form a Park Watch Committee to assist in maintaining the amenities in Bukit Purmei Hillock Park and curb acts of vandalism and littering. The CCTV CSSP initiative by Tampines Starlight RC is another localised effort that has yielded positive results.

Up till now, more than 400 Residents’ Committees (RCs) and Neighbourhood Committees (NCs), out of the total of 536 RCs and NCs, have crafted their own CSSP. As the number of CSSPs worked out and implemented is large, it is not possible for me to mention each one of them today. However, I must say that every one of the CSSPs is special in its own way, and it would not have been possible to tackle so many safety and security concerns if not for the commitment and bright ideas of the people involved.

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to commend the grassroots leaders for their commitment and support in adopting the CSSP approach to address, together with the residents and the Home Team, the safety and security issues in their neighbourhoods. I am confident that you will be able to reap the fruits of CSSP in the months and years to come. We are definitely a step closer to building a safer and more secure community.

We have come some way in CSSP implementation. It is now time for us to move on to reach out to and garner greater support from more residents. To achieve this, we need to effectively communicate the rationale and benefits of CSSP to them. I am pleased to officiate the launch of the CSSP comic book, and the CSSP skits by the artistes from TCS 8 and TV 12 later in the programme. All these new initiatives aim to spread key CSSP messages to the community and help bring more residents on board to reach our ultimate objective - A Caring Community & Safe Homes.

Finally, I would like to thank the Co-Chairmen and members of the Organising Committee for their collective effort in organising this seminar. I wish all of you a fruitful seminar and continued success in making Singapore a safer and more secure home for all of us.

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