Written Reply to Parliamentary Question on Having Officers Who Can Communicate With Callers Who Only Speak Dialects or Foreign Languages When Using the Emergency Video System

Question:

Ms Joan Pereira: To ask the Minister for Home Affairs with regard to the live video stream function on the Emergency Video System which allows "999" or "995" callers to provide real-time location and visual information of the emergency incident, how will it be ensured that there are officers who can communicate with callers who can only speak in dialects or other languages.

Answer:

Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law:

1.   The Emergency Video System operators are the same pool of operators who answer and process “999” and “995” calls. The Operations Centres of the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) each maintains a pool of operators with the ability to converse in Singapore’s four official languages, as well as some dialects commonly used in Singapore.