MHA Scholarship and Sponsorship Awards Ceremony 2026 - Speech by Mr Edwin Tong, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs

Award recipients,

Family members and guests,

My Home Team colleagues,

Introduction

1. A very good afternoon to all of you, and I am very pleased to join you at the MHA Scholarship and Sponsorship Award Presentation Ceremony 2026.

2. This afternoon, we will recognise 173 Home Team officers. 105 will pursue undergraduate studies. 68 will pursue postgraduate studies. 7 officers will also receive book prizes for outstanding academic performance in the Singapore University of Social Sciences’ Public Safety and Security programme.

3. These awards are important because they recognise your work, your potential, and also our confidence in each and every one of you.

4. They are also an investment in the future of the Home Team.

The Home Team’s Performance

5. The Home Team’s mission is demanding but I would say, immensely purposeful – keeping Singapore and Singaporeans safe and secure, and also strengthening, everyday, the trust of our people in the institutions.

6. By this measure, the Home Team has delivered. Singapore remains one of the safest countries in the world. In Gallup’s 2025 Global Safety Report, Singapore was ranked the world’s safest country for the 12th time and placed second in the Law and Order Index.

7. Public confidence is also high. In the 2025 Public Perception Survey, 94.9% of respondents expressed confidence in the Home Team’s ability to keep Singapore safe and secure — this is the highest level in the past decade.

A More Complex and Uncertain World

8. But we do not take this position for granted. The world is more complex and a lot more uncertain. Threats move faster, cross borders more easily, and they are also amplified by technology and artificial intelligence.

9. Criminal networks are no longer physical, they don’t have to be physically present in Singapore, to cause harm to us in Singapore. AI can also help them create synthetic identities, deepfakes, and automated scam operations at big scale. This changes the speed, the reach, as well as the sophistication of crime.

10. The Home Team must therefore move much further upstream, much earlier in the cycle. We must detect weak signals early, and we must be able to make sense of large volumes of data quickly, and we must also be able to move and respond quickly across both the physical as well as the digital domains.

11. SPF’s Cyber Command shows what this means in practice. It brings scams- as well as cybercrime-fighting capabilities under one single command. Working with HTX, GovTech, banks, and technology partners, SPF uses AI-enabled tools to scan hundreds of thousands of websites every day, identify likely scam sites within a few seconds, and share scam indicators with the banks in real time. This helps us collectively disrupt malicious infrastructure before more victims are targeted.

Securing Borders and Protecting Lives

12. At our borders, the challenge for all of us is scale. In 2025, our checkpoints processed a record 245 million travellers, exceeding the 230 million recorded the year before. Officers must keep legitimate travel moving, in other words, we have to ensure the border flows smoothly. But at the same time, detecting persons and also items of security concern within such large flows. So, it’s not just a security issue when we look at the border, but there is also operational and functional purpose behind what our officers do.

13. ICA’s transformation shows how technology can raise both security and service standards at the same time.

14. Under the New Clearance Concept, automated lanes, biometrics, and risk assessment have made passport-less clearance the norm at our checkpoints. The Automated Passenger Clearance System will extend this further, allowing travellers in cars to clear immigration using QR codes and facial biometrics. And ICA’s Matrix tool, which uses multimodal AI to read, to classify, and to extract information from passports and supporting documents, will also reduce manual processing and free officers up for higher-value work.

15. In Singapore, the drug situation also remains a key concern.

16. It is not just an enforcement challenge, it is also a social challenge that affects individuals, families, and the wider community. Last year, unfortunately, the youngest person arrested for drug abuse was just 12 years old, and half of the new drug abusers arrested were below the age of 30. Drug-related deaths have also risen.

17. We must, therefore, work hard to disrupt supply and detect trends as early as possible, as well as work with partners to not only rehabilitate and reintegrate, but also to prevent addiction and harm before it settles and takes root.

18. CNB's comprehensive drug control strategy is central to this. In 2025, its relentless enforcement efforts dismantled 25 drug syndicates and took firm action against drug offenders. 32 Singaporean men were convicted and sentenced for drug and money laundering offences, with total drugs seized estimated to be worth over $1.5 million, enough to feed the addiction of about 7,000 abusers for one week.

Future-Ready Officers

19. In such a complex and uncertain world, to keep the Home Team exceptional, we will need exceptional officers to be able to tackle these challenges now, and for us to move forward to the future.

20. Officers who are agile, curious, and lead change with confidence, working effectively with our partners.

21. We will invest in and develop our officers. Through the Home Team Competency Framework, training roadmaps, milestone programmes, tradecraft training as well as leadership development, we build capabilities right across an officer’s career with the Home Team.

22. We are also strengthening digital and AI training, and supporting further studies through scholarships and sponsorships. This helps us to deepen our officers’ expertise in emerging fields, newer areas, technology areas, emerging trends, emerging threats, and the Emerging Skills Scholarship was introduced in 2024 to develop deep technical skills in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, and Digitalisation. 12 officers have received the scholarship.

23. It is indeed very encouraging that our award recipients are taking charge of their own learning, and building depth and range in their own career, and also looking to invest in themselves.

24. I am confident that this scholarship and sponsorship opportunity will help you to develop to be capable and future leaders, helping to navigate the Home Team in our very complex, challenging operating environment.

One Home Team

25. Capabilities matter, but culture, mindset, matters just as much.

26. No Department, unit or officer can deal with today’s threats alone. That is why the Home Team has now synthetised our different agencies to work more closely together.

27. Scams, online harms, border threats, drugs, emergencies, and rehabilitation, all of these require us to work as one integrated Home Team with a shared sense of mission, of trust and mutual support across all our Departments.

28. That I would say, is strongly the Home Team spirit. It is anchored on integrity, care, professionalism, courage, and service. It gives our officers the confidence to act, but also the humility to learn, and the discipline to put mission above self.

Award Recipients

29. Let me highlight three recipients whose journeys reflect the capabilities and the values that we need and that I briefly spoke about.

30. First, DSP(1) Chia Ka Ying from SPF is a Planning Officer at SPF’s Online Criminal Harms Act Office. She has received the MHA Emerging Skills Scholarship and Postgraduate Study Award to deepen her expertise in data analytics and artificial intelligence. She hopes to apply predictive modelling to identify emerging risks and support more anticipatory interventions.

31. MX12 Muhammad Syarif bin Mohamad Yasin is a Senior Executive in MHQ’s Human Resource Division. He supports the Home Team’s engagement initiatives for NS servicemen and has also served actively as an ORNSman, serving as a Responsibility Appointment Holder in SPF. Through the MHA Study Award, he will pursue Human Resource Management, strengthen his ability to care for, to engage, and to develop our people.

32. SGT3 Ng Xin Le is a Senior Assistant Executive at ICA’s Integrated Checkpoints Command (Land). She supports border security by identifying subjects of interest and emerging smuggling trends. Through the MHA Degree Scholarship, she will pursue studies in Public Safety and Security, and deepen her capabilities in intelligence analysis as well as security operations.

33. These are just three examples of many, but each of them shows a different way to serve. But the common thread that runs throughout is clear: take ownership, keep learning, and bring what you learn back here to strengthen the Home Team.

Conclusion

34. As I conclude, I want to say to all recipients, this is an important step in your Home Team journey. Use it well. Acquire new skills, new knowledge, understand the complex landscape, and see how you can bring those skills back to help us confront the landscape. At the same time, ask hard questions. Challenge yourself. Build strong networks.

35. Uphold the One Home Team values. And come back ready to contribute even more — to the Home Team, to the public, and to Singapore.

36. My warmest congratulations to all our award recipients, and to your families who have supported you. I want to say a big thank you to the families as well. Every time our Home Team officer dedicates time, effort, sometimes beyond hours, weekends, the support that you give them is critical, crucial to ensuring that the work they do, they can do with peace of mind, and that they can focus on the mission at hand. I thank all of you for being here today, and constantly being there for all our officers at the Home Team.

37. I wish you all our award recipients a fruitful and meaningful learning journey.

38. Thank you very much.