Dadah Itu Haram (DIH) Volunteers Engagement Session With SkillsFuture - Opening Remarks by Assoc Prof Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry National Development

1.    A very good evening! I’m happy to see close to 80 of us here tonight for this engagement session. I would like to thank all of you for volunteering with the DIH campaign which started in 2017. I am happy to see many familiar faces tonight, including some really, really familiar faces! Some of you have been actively helping us, and we are very grateful to you, the time you spend, and the support that you’ve given, working together and supporting this very important work.

2.    I just posted on Facebook, on CNB’s latest arrest. We will continue to go upstream and at the same time, most importantly, make sure that we take strict and firm enforcement against those who have the intention to bring in, to introduce, and to traffic and push drugs to our people. This will protect lives, and at the same time, highlights the importance of your work – how we can bring out resilience and awareness of the harmful effects of drugs; and for families and the community to keep a lookout for one another, so that those people who may want to do harm to us and our families will not be able to do so. We will bring more and more people together with us on this very important journey – that is, to stay away from drugs, keep drugs away from our society, and most importantly, to keep Singapore drug free.

3.    The COVID-19 situation has been challenging for everyone. It has also affected the DIH campaign because we have had to scale down our physical engagements to a large extent. It has been a very much different past one year plus or so, compared to when DIH started in 2017. Because of COVID-19, we have to be careful. Like you, I miss going to the ground with you to spread the DIH message. I had some opportunity to go around to a few areas, and we all hope we can do more of that. But because of COVID-19, we had have to scale down. We hope that when the time is right, we will hit the streets and rally the community to always be aware of the dangers of drugs.

4.    In the meantime, while doing that, we also need to adapt and upgrade ourselves, so that we are not only able to spread the awareness about the harmful effects of drugs, but also able to give sound practical advice by knowing the available avenues in upgrading oneself. Today’s presentation by Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), South West CDC on Skills Future credit is a good example of useful knowledge that is beneficial not only to yourself, but also the people you are reaching out to. As part of the DIH campaign, we take the opportunity to support our volunteers, remain connected, and continually upgrade ourselves.

5.    I am hopeful that we would all benefit from the presentation by Ms Nurul Iman of e2i, South West CDC .

6.    I want you to continue to help the community and I am certain that with your continued involvement in the DIH campaign, it will encourage more to join us. I’m very happy when I meet people who are familiar with DIH, and who want to see how they can play a part. They see the harmful effects of drugs on the society, and they want Singapore to remain drug free. That is our vision and how we can journey through this. Nevertheless, we know that it is not an easy task. As such, we have to work very hard, and we are working very hard together with you.

7.    So once again, my sincere thanks to all of you who have come on board this very important journey with us. I’m also thankful to those who have come forward – organisations, groups of people, individuals, who are really making a very important effort together with us. Tonight, we thank Nurul, as well as her colleagues from South West CDC and e2i for bringing this very important upgrading aspect of our life in Singapore.

8.    Thank you, and I wish you a fruitful event.