SINGAPORE: Within the next 18 months, emergency preparedness days will be rolled out to all constituencies in Singapore, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in its progress update on the SGSecure movement on Sunday (Sep 24).

Officially launched on Sep 24 last year, the SGSecure movement aims to prepare and train Singaporeans on how to prevent and deal with a terror attack.



Since its launch, police and Singapore Civil Defence Force officers and grassroots volunteers have visited more than 220,000 households to explain what SGSecure is to residents, MHA said in its assessment. Thirty-six emergency preparedness days, which help the public practise responding to a terror threat, have been conducted, as well as 14 crisis response exercises.

By 2019, every constituency will have undergone at least one such exercise, MHA added.

Apart from public training exercises, members of the public can also receive news alerts on terror-related incidents through the SGSecure app. A total of 843,000 devices now have the app, MHA said.

Analysts said that there has been an "uptick in awareness" among Singaporeans concerning terror threats.



"From my own analysis, people are aware that there is such a thing as SGSecure," said Associate Professor Kumar Ramakrishna, head of policy studies at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

"I detect that among the public at large, there is an uptick in awareness that we do have a threat of transnational terrorism."