SINGAPORE – It has been more than four years since Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat collapsed in a Cabinet meeting, but the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) paramedic who attended to him still remembers the day vividly.

Then a staff sergeant who was in charge of an ambulance crew of four, paramedic Janice Lee said the scene was under control when her team arrived, and they responded as they would with any other patient.

“We were quite goal-oriented – we knew what we had to do,” said Lieutenant Lee, 35.

Dr Janil Puthucheary, one of three Cabinet members who are medical doctors and came to Mr Heng’s aid, was already resuscitating the Finance Minister when the SCDF team arrived.

Lt Lee had questioned Dr Janil when she saw that he was deviating from their operating procedure and, accepting the doctor’s explanation for the way he was administering treatment, continued to assist him and prepare Mr Heng for transfer to the hospital.

This earned her praise from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.

Lt Lee said it was all in a day’s work, adding that this experience would be equally applicable to her future role as a rota commander of a fire station.

“Whether in the medical field or firefighting, it’s going to be the same – we stick to our tasks and we do what we are supposed to,” said Lt Lee.

She is one of 45 cadets who graduated on Thursday (June 18) from SCDF’s Rota Commander Course, which trains officers to take on a leadership role in front-line firefighting and rescue operations.They are the first batch to be commissioned as senior officers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The seven-month course started in December, and its format had to be altered due to the pandemic. Cadets had to keep to safe distancing measures, and were segregated into smaller groups of about 10 each. This meant that the cadets had to go through their exercises in smaller groups.

Officers, however, saw some benefits in this as it trained them to work more effectively with a smaller team.

Lt Taran Henri Dao Ming Franck said this would be similar to the experience on the ground, as rota commanders would likely have to work with just a few teams at the fire scene, and not the whole fire station.

At the closed-door commissioning ceremony on Thursday, SCDF Commissioner Eric Yap said Covid-19 will not be the “single most challenging encounter” that SCDF officers encounter.

“The SCDF, together with our newly commissioned senior officers, must expect difficult operations ahead of us and we must continue to forge ahead with determination, resolve and grit to fulfil the force’s lifesaving mission.”

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