POLICE MANPOWER CONSTRAINTS
Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam spoke about how the number of police investigation officers (IOs) who deal with scams has not been able to keep up with the rapid jump in cases.
He said that many cases are complex and require investigators to “pursue more evidential areas than before”.
While the number of reported scams has gone up six-fold since 2018, the number of IOs dealing with scams has only increased by about 11 per cent. Mr Shanmugam called this a “significant gap”.
“Police is already a very lean outfit. With the increase in cases, our IOs are increasingly even more overstretched and overworked, and it will not be sustainable for them to continue cancelling their leave days, covering extra duty shifts, and so on.”
The Home Affairs Ministry is tackling this by trying to automate and streamline investigation work processes where possible, Mr Shanmugam added.
The ministry is also working closely with the relevant government agencies to see if it can get additional resourcing support for the police’s investigation fraternity.
Mr Shanmugam noted that police have looked at prioritising the areas with the most pressing needs as well, such as the investigation of scams and sexual offences.
“We are looking to channel more resources towards them. But, on the flip side, this also naturally means there will be some other areas where work will be deprioritised. These are the trade-offs.”
MAINTENANCE OF RACIAL HARMONY ACT
Mr Shanmugam also briefly talked about his ministry’s plans to introduce a new racial harmony law in parliament later this year.
The Maintenance of Racial Harmony Act was first raised by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in 2021 after some racist incidents that year, as well as discussions on the ground about race relations in Singapore.
Mr Shanmugam said on Thursday that the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill will “consolidate the government’s powers to deal with racial issues, and strengthen our suite of powers to preserve racial harmony”.
“We will also introduce softer reparative measures, which would seek to help the aggrieved community take a more reconciliatory view towards an offender and strengthen mutual understanding between races,” he added.