Question:
Mr K Karthikeyan: To ask the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs whether the SCDF can dedicate an ambulance on a standby basis for Jurong Island.
Answer:
1. At any one time, SCDF deploys a fleet of 50 emergency ambulances across Singapore to ensure prompt response to emergency medical calls. SCDF considers demand factors like population density and case load when deciding on its deployment strategy. In 2014, SCDF responded to more than 155,000 ambulance calls, or about 427 calls per day. Of these, 73 calls over the whole year, or 1 call every 5 days, were from Jurong Island.
2. Given this case load, it is not practical for the SCDF to assign one ambulance to standby just for Jurong Island. However to ensure swift response to emergency medical calls on Jurong Island, an emergency ambulance is deployed at the Jurong Pier Fire Post, located at the Jurong Island Checkpoint, from 7 am to 11 pm daily. This covers the period when industrial activity on Jurong Island is the busiest. However for optimal use of our limited ambulance resources, this ambulance is also dispatched to emergency medical cases in the vicinity, such as Boon Lay, Tuas and Jurong Industrial Estate.
3. SCDF's deployment of its emergency ambulance fleet is not static. SCDF closely monitors the population changes, its response times and adjusts the deployment of its emergency ambulances as necessary to ensure prompt and effective response.
