A former Singapore Civil Defence Force Lieutenant-Colonel was charged in court on Wednesday (March 16) with unlawfully stalking a woman in August 2015.
Goh Wee Hong, 39, was with the SCDF when he allegedly stalked the woman by sending her text messages in which he made sexual advances to the 28-year-old to harass her between Aug 27 and 30 last year.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sheryl Janet George successfully asked for a gag order, so the woman cannot be named.
Goh, who is married, is represented by Mr Tan Hee Joek, who told the court that he had just been briefed and has instructions to claim trial.
He applied for access to the text messages referred to in the charge.
A pre-trial conference is scheduled for April 27.
If convicted under the Protection from Harassment Act, Goh can be fined up to $5,000 and jailed for up to 12 months
It was nearly midnight on March 15, 1986 when Ms Helen Tan was carried out of the rubble, her body wrapped in a blanket.
At about 11.25am that day, the building she was in had collapsed, trapping 50 people and ultimately claiming the lives of 33, in what was to be one of the worst disasters in post-war Singapore.
Better known as Hotel New World, the Lian Yak Building at the junction of Owen and Serangoon roads housed a bank on the first level and a nightclub on its second level. The other four levels were occupied by the 67-room hotel.
More than 500 personnel from the police, Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), the now defunct Singapore Fire Service (SFS), and Singapore Armed Forces took part in a five-dayrescue operation that saved 17 people including Ms Tan.
She had SCDF Senior Warrant Officers (SWO) Jimmy Tan, Mohd Salleh Ali and Isnin Ghani to thank.
Then in their 20s, they were firemen in the SFS’ MRT task force, and had undergone rescue training in the MRT tunnels that were under construction.
The training came in handy, they told The Straits Times yesterday on the eve of the tragedy’s 30th anniversary, but what they lacked was equipment.
After hearing Ms Tan’s cries for help, “we had to use our bare hands and emergency tools to dig a tunnel through 6m to 8m to reach her”, said SWO Tan, 58.
They took turns to crawl through the narrow passageway, struggling to breathe through the thick dust and hoping that the tunnel would not collapse on them.
A basin that separated the rescuers from Ms Tan then had to be chipped away with a small hammer before she was finally freed.
Nine survivors were rescued on the first day, and Ms Tan was the last that day.
On Wednesday morning, after several tests using a noise detector found no signs of life, the rescue operations were called off.
Madam Chua Kim Choo was the last to be rescued, after being trapped for 83 hours, or more than three days.
Rescuers worked until Saturday to recover the remaining bodies.
“Once we heard the order to stand down, we were relieved. Our bodies also started to feel the ache,” said SWO Salleh, 58.
Investigations later found that the building had collapsed due to structural faults and shoddy construction, as well as strain from new installations on the roof.
The Government also merged the Singapore Fire Service and the Singapore Civil Defence Force in 1989, to ensure better coordination for rescue work, especially during disasters.
The three officers were among 94 people presented awards by then President Wee Kim Wee.
“Sometimes the juniors will ask what’s this triangle badge,” said SWO Tan, pointing to his uniform.
“I tell them it’s a rescue badge for Hotel New World. We try to share our experience with them, so they can learn.”
This morning, 8 off-duty firefighters from Bukit Batok Fire Station were having breakfast in a food court at Causeway Point after their 24-hour shift when they saw excessive smoke emitting from one of the stalls.
They went to the kitchen to take a look and were alerted by the staff that a stove had caught fire. The Regular officer and 7 National Servicemen immediately sprang into action as their lifesaving instincts took over. 2 of them evacuated the staff from the kitchen while the rest evacuated other members of public to safety.
They extinguished the fire with a hose reel and fire extinguisher. Due to their quick thinking, the damage was confined to the kitchen stove and no one was injured.
Jeganathan Ramasamy, 63, was found guilty on Thursday (Oct 22) after a 10-day trial. He had assumed that the two iPads, worth a total of S$1,877, he had obtained from SCDF vendors were for personal use, when in fact the iPads had been entrusted to him for the purpose of testing out SCDF mobile applications developed by an external vendor.
He gave one iPad to his daughter, and sold the other to his colleague Mr Eric Yap Wee Teck, then a senior director at SCDF, for S$200.
Mr Yap is now commissioner of the SCDF, having been appointed in February 2012.
Jeganathan said in his defence that he was under the impression that he could test out the iPads in the hopes of purchasing them later on, but District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan dismissed this claim.
The judge is expected to deliver his sentence on Nov 16, after the prosecution and defence have made their submissions on sentence and mitigation, respectively. Criminal breach of trust by a public servant can attract a jail term of up to 20 years’ jail and a fine.
JAKARTA — Singapore’s offer in September of only “one aircraft” to Indonesia to help fight forest fires that have caused thick haze to descend around the region was “insulting”, said Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Politics, Law and Security Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
Speaking in an interview last Friday (Oct 16) with the country’s Tempo magazine, Mr Luhut defended Indonesia’s perceived tardiness in putting out the fires and in accepting foreign aid.
“During the dry season, peatlands tend to be very flammable. When we bombard the land with water to put out the flames, they just come out again. So I get a headache when people get upset. What are we supposed to do?” he replied when asked why this year’s forest fires are worse than those of last year’s.
“Then someone asks why we didn’t accept the assistance offered earlier. There are many reasons for that. Firstly, we wanted to try and do it on our own. Secondly, we didn’t realise the process would be so long. Thirdly, (Singapore) offered only one aircraft. It was insulting.”
In September, Singapore offered a C-130 aircraft for cloud-seeding operations, a Chinook helicopter with a water bucket for aerial fire-fighting, and up to two C-130 aircraft to ferry the Singapore Civil Defence Force fire-fighting assistance team.
Mr Luhut’s comments in the latest issue of the magazine came after Indonesia finally accepted help from Singapore on Oct 7 after repeatedly declining offers of help for weeks. Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen had even flown to Jakarta at the end of September to meet his Indonesian counterpart at one of the meetings. During his visit, Dr Ng also met Mr Luhut.
On October 11, aircraft from Singapore and Malaysia began water-bombing missions to put out the raging fires in South Sumatra.
Singapore sent a Republic of Singapore Armed Forces (RSAF) Chinook helicopter with a 5,000-litre heli-bucket and 34 SAF personnel to help fight the ongoing forest fires, together with a six-man Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team from the Singapore Civil Defence Force. Two RSAF C-130 aircraft were also deployed to transport SAF and SCDF personnel.
In an interview on Oct 7, Indonesian Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung told CNN Indonesia that Jakarta had earlier rejected Singapore’s offers of assistance because it was concerned that the city state would claim credit for solving the problem, despite being worried about the rapidly deteriorating situation.
In the Tempo interview, Mr Luhut also pledged to confiscate the land and revoke the licences of big companies that practise illegal burning next year.
“This haze problem is also about injustice. When a company controls 2.8 million hectares of land, where is the justice? Then there are those who own 600,000 hectares of land but own not a single fire extinguisher. Should the government be dousing fires all the time? If we call it a national disaster, they will benefit by it.”
