SINGAPORE: There has not been any case of pilots consuming alcohol or drugs before boarding aeroplanes in Singapore, based on records from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), said Senior Minister of State for Transport Lam Pin Min on Tuesday (Oct 2) in Parliament.

In response to a follow-up question from Member of Parliament Ang Wei Neng, Dr Lam said random blood testing is currently not carried out in Singapore. However, there are spot checks specifically performed by CAAS during ramp inspections – and in more than 900 of such inspections conducted since 2013, the authority has not detected any pilot showing signs of alcohol intoxication.

Last month, a Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight out of Melbourne was cancelled after the pilot failed a random alcohol test conducted by Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority. SIA has suspended the pilot and CAAS is investigating the case, which is the first to be reported to the authority in a decade. 

READ: Singapore Airlines flight from Melbourne cancelled after pilot failed alcohol test

“Most civil aviation regulators, including CAAS, hold their airlines responsible for ensuring that their pilots do not operate aircraft whilst intoxicated,” said Dr Lam. “Specifically, CAAS requires Singapore carriers to ensure that their pilots do not consume any alcohol at least 8 hours before flight, wherever they operate in the world.”

Flying out of Singapore’s airports under the influence of drugs or alcohol – regardless of whether the pilot is operating a Singapore or foreign registered aircraft – is an offence under the Air Navigation Order. The penalty is up to S$100,000 and/or five years’ imprisonment upon conviction.

READ: Singapore Airlines pilots not allowed to consume alcohol within 10 hours of flight

READ: SIA pilot who failed alcohol test was first reported case in 10 years, says CAAS

Dr Lam also revealed that Singapore carriers have set up peer support groups to identify and manage individuals who may have alcohol-related issues.

“These support groups provide a non-punitive approach for pilots to seek support and treatment,” he said. “Such peer support groups are recognised internationally as an effective measure to identify such pilots at an early stage to rehabilitate them, or to remove them from flying duties where necessary.

“Operating an aircraft while intoxicated is a serious matter. CAAS is reviewing the regulations and procedures to more strongly deter such behaviour,” Dr Lam concluded.

SINGAPORE: When it comes to cybersecurity, humans are the weakest link. Attackers often leverage on this weakness to gain access to sensitive data, carry out scams and perform fraud.

Living in Singapore, with our low crime, effective security and strong legal system, people are often fooled into thinking the same of the internet world. Or they adopt the “who would target me?” syndrome. But, the connected digital world means anonymous attackers can target anyone in the world.

While the recent Singhealth breach made people aware of cybersecurity attacks, most still view cybersecurity as an organisational or state issue – not an individual one. 

However, cybersecurity is a personal issue. The cyber safety of organisations and a nation depends on individuals staying safe.

Attackers will continue to create new forms of attack, which exploit new vulnerabilities. In the past, we feared the IloveYou virus, Conficker worm and Wannacry ransomware. 

Crypto-jacking malware (which is the unauthorised use of someone else’s computer to mine cryptocurrency) have made headlines today. There will surely be new ones next year.

So what is the best way to stay safe? In today’s digital era, just about every aspect of our lives – from paying for food, to taking transport or connecting with friends – are somehow connected to the digital world.

A personal cyberattack is no longer a minor inconvenience, but something that could compromise your daily lifestyle. Fortunately, there are habits that you can cultivate to protect your digital lifestyle.

READ: Cybersecurity is the next economic battleground, a commentary

READ: The way companies look to fend off cyberattacks needs a rethink, a commentary

The first set of habits is to get your house in order. Your “house” refers to your computers and mobile devices.

HABIT #1: UPDATE YOUR SYSTEMS IMMEDIATELY

Turn on automatic updates and whenever you see a pop up, telling you to update, save what you are doing, run the update immediately and go for a break.

There are no perfect systems and software, as security researchers and attackers find vulnerabilities on a daily basis. But too many people put off system updates for another time, which exposes themselves to potential attackers.

READ: What those ‘updates to our privacy policy’ mean for Singapore, a commentary

HABIT #2: ALWAYS INSTALL AN ANTI-VIRUS

Whenever you get a new computer or devices, download and install anti-virus as your first software if they are not pre-installed. This applies to Microsoft PCs, Macs and Android devices.

Anti-virus prices are much cheaper these days with lots of good choices and bundle options. It’s a small investment compared to the price of your devices and the value of your personal information in these devices.

Once your house is in order, the next two habits safeguard the “keys” to your house – the passwords.

HABIT #3: USE LONG PASSWORDS

Passwords are meant to be secret, something only you know and are hard for others to find out. So avoid using easy-to-guess passwords like “123456”, common words from the dictionary or your personal information, like your date of birth. Good passwords are long and something only you can remember.

One recommendation is to use three words related to a special memory. For example, “bedokrainingdurian” would be easy for you to remember, if you tasted the best durian at Bedok on a rainy day.

READ: The four deadly cybersecurity sins most of us are guilty of, a commentary

HABIT #4: DON’T REUSE PASSWORDS

Just as we don’t share a secret with everyone, don’t reuse your password for different applications. This protects you against the scenario where attackers steal your login password from one website in a data breach, and subsequently use the collected data to login to other websites.

Famous data breaches where user login credentials are stolen include Yahoo!, Adobe and LinkedIn. You can check online if your email address has been compromised in a data breach. 

And finally, you need to watch who is going in and out of your house. The remaining habits focus on cultivating safe web habits to keep away from unsavoury characters.

HABIT #5: WHEN NOT EXPECTED, DON’T CLICK

The most common way attackers target their victim is through sending phishing emails or messages. These are fraudulent attempts by attackers pretending to be someone else in an attempt to bait you to click links and download malicious software on your devices.

If you have not ordered a TV and a delivery man turns up with one, most people will be suspicious. Likewise, if you get an unexpected email address to a generic “dear sir/mdm”, the sender’s email address does not look right and he is asking you to click on links, don’t click. Don’t let them into your house.

HABIT #6: WATCH WHERE YOU SURF

When you visit a foreign country, good safety habits include staying on the main street, avoiding the alleys and dodgy establishments, and sticking with safe food choices. The same applies when surfing the web.

Only download software from official app stores by Microsoft, Google and Apple or legitimate sites. If you are unsure if it’s a legitimate site, Google the topic and legitimate sites will appear top.

Most legitimate sites will have HTTPS enabled (green padlock on browser bar) and the site will look professionally-built. If the site looks like a dodgy establishment, avoid it.

Be suspicious of sites with lots of pop-ups asking you to download and “Buy Now”. If a website tells you that you are infected with virus, don’t believe them. 

Turn on safe browsing features on your web browser, which will warn you of fraudulent or unsafe sites.

HABIT #7: KEEP YOUR DIGITAL FOOTPRINT SMALL

Visiting social media platforms leaves behind your digital footprints. Whenever you share on social media, these digital footprints tell others who you are, where you are, how you can be contacted, whom you know and what you are doing.

Attackers collect your digital footprint to be more effective in their attack against you or the people you know. For example, a fraudster may use your children’s names, and their known whereabouts to conduct a scam against you.

Nowadays, people often share information on relationships, location data and contact numbers freely on social media sites. 

Understand the settings on social media sites and make a conscious decision on who can see your posts – whether it’s your friends, your friends’ friends or the public. Keep your digital footprint as small as possible.

For those that want to stay safe online, get your house in order, safeguard the keys, and be careful of who you invite in.

Ng Pan Yong is founder of The Cyber Assembly, a cybersecurity startup that provides active learning platforms to help organisations and individuals connect to cyber skills.

SINGAPORE: Poor families should get longer financial aid from the government. That is what the director of a family service centre has suggested as a way of bridging the class divide.

It sparked an intense debate in the Channel NewsAsia documentary Regardless of Class, with host and OnePeople.sg chairman Janil Puthucheary remaining unconvinced that long-term government handouts are the solution.

Yet the question of what it would take to uplift poor families is one he “often grapples with” as a politician, he admitted. So the search for answers to the class divide continues. (Watch the documentary here.)

Methodist Welfare Services Covenant Family Service Centre (Hougang) director Cindy Ng-Tay, a social worker for decades, based her suggestion on her centre’s experience with families struggling to break out of intergenerational poverty.

It takes a long time – at least five to seven years of “consistent work” with a family – before there is a breakthrough, she said. But the short-to-medium-term assistance provided by help agencies may last only three to six months.

A review by social service officers determines whether the assistance is extended or stopped. And she thinks it may be better to “channel the resources that we put into the review into a longer assistance” instead.

In this way, the poor would not have to “worry that their assistance would be cut off at a certain point”, which creates “unnecessary stress”. But Dr Puthucheary felt that the proposal could be costly.

“Wouldn’t three to six months be appropriate for some people?” he asked.

“How many? Because the experience we have is (it) isn’t enough,” replied Mrs Ng-Tay, saying that it causes the poor to “focus on the here and now” rather than thinking about long-term plans such as saving up for their children.

We want them to be able to have foresight and to start planning, the way you and I plan about our future, about our retirement.

When Dr Puthucheary suggested that the financial cost of her idea would be significant, she said: “We also have to take into account the social cost of not having this … What’s the cost of letting the divide continue?”

READ: Class – not race nor religion – is potentially Singapore’s most divisive fault line

The cost of getting it wrong, however, includes making it worse, he countered as he asked her: “You’re prepared to take that risk?” She replied: “I’d be prepared to take that risk to make things better.”

When he said it could “trap people in poverty” and cost “a lot of money we don’t have”, she replied in turn that it could “release people” and “really help us with the next generation”.

READ: Commentary: Three stories on why tackling poverty requires active listening

STUCK DESPITE INTERVENTION

While the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, has remained stable in Singapore over the years, a segment of the population is still trapped in poverty, acknowledged Dr Puthucheary, who is also a senior minister of state.

There are nearly 60,000 public rental flats, where the poorest people live, he noted. Part-time caterer Siti Sufiyah, for example, has been receiving financial assistance for years but is still living in her rental unit of 15 years.

Said Dr Puthucheary: “That’s not how it’s meant to work.”

Mdm Siti ended up in her financial situation after her first husband beat her up and their second child was diagnosed as a high-risk asthma patient. At that point, she was unable to work.

“Which employer would want to employ somebody who always takes leave? Because my son would be admitted (to hospital). In a week, three days he’d be in hospital,” she recalled.

Her second marriage gave her two more children, but her then husband cheated on her and did not provide financial support for the children.

Asked how difficult it has been to renew her financial assistance – which can be tied to the recipient finding work – the divorcee said: “If I want to go out to work, I need somebody to tend to my children.”

Her two elder boys are now in the Normal (Technical) stream, which saddens her “a bit”, as she expected her children to make it the Normal (Academic) stream like she did.

Access to resources and the ability to use resources – constrained by years of chronic stress caused by poverty – are two of the reasons families are stuck despite intervention, said Mrs Ng-Tay.

Besides her idea of longer financial aid, she identified early education and support for children from low-income families as crucial.

“Don’t tie the access of resources for children to their parents’ marital status, or socio-economic status, or even work status,” she suggested.

She agreed with Dr Puthucheary on the importance of balancing parental and social responsibility, but added: “We need to look at the vulnerability of the children.

If we want them to get a good start in life, then it would be quite unfair for the children’s life outcomes to be dependent on whether their parents would be motivated or not.

The right balance, she felt, was to “recognise structural factors that maintain poverty” and to also understand that the poor “have the potential to be inspired” to live better lives.

CAN BUSINESSES MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

One person turning her life around is barista Evalene Foo. People once thought she was good for nothing because she had dropped out of school in Secondary Three, ran away from home and got into trouble with the law.

“I mixed with bad friends, so I lost interest in my studies. That’s why I dropped out,” explained the 21-year-old.

But then she went for emotional training, which taught her to overcome her anger, be happier and not let other people affect her. She now dreams of managing her own cafe, maybe in 10 years’ time.

Her newfound ambition, after a month on the job, “shocked” her mother, she admitted. “Because in the past, I wasn’t that good. I had no confidence in myself.”

Ms Foo works at Bettr Barista, founded in 2011 by Ms Pamela Chng to provide marginalised women with an employable skill.

“A lot of them come from broken families or just families who don’t have the resources and time to invest in their livelihood and their education. You see them falling back further and further in school,” said Ms Chng.

“By the time they hit 15 or 16, they’re just too far behind. And a lot of them, through a fear of failure, give up.”

She sees this happening “a lot, especially through our conversations with the schools”. While there is little she can do about the home environment, she thinks businesses “can do a lot to, say, rethink how we’re working”.

But are efforts like hers too thin on the ground to make a difference? “The approach that we’re taking here is really looking at the depth of the impact and the longevity of the impact,” said Ms Chng.

“If we can change one person’s life, and they go around and change their children’s lives, their family’s lives and then their community’s lives, then you can start to amplify the impact.”

She agreed with Dr Puthucheary that it would not be easy to incentivise businesses to get on board, but she added: “The incentive is the future. What future do you want to create for yourself?”

INTEGRATED PUBLIC HOUSING

One plan of action for encouraging social mixing that will soon come to fruition is the construction of the first three integrated Build-To-Order blocks, comprising rental and sold flats, in Woodlands, Bukit Batok and Sengkang.

READ: Housing and urban plans must be inclusive and resilient: Lawrence Wong

But even this may not be a good idea, according to Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Leong Chan Hoong, who questioned how some of the potential frictions on the ground could be mitigated or addressed.

“There’ll be tensions because the needs, priorities and values are different,” he said. “That’ll be the challenge … Contact alone may not necessarily produce the desired outcome. It’s important to ensure that the conditions of the contact are acceptable to everybody.

“In other words, you have to ensure that interaction is genuine, intimate and, most importantly, there’s no status difference in the interaction. Nobody feels intimidated (or) that they’re being slighted because they’re engaging with someone of a different level.”

READ: Commentary: Direct interventions, not just social mixing, needed to narrow housing inequality

It is only human, acknowledged Dr Puthucheary, “to seek out people who are like us, to find our tribe”. But if classism – prejudice against people from a different social class – prevails, then shared spaces would not work, he noted.

And if that is case, class divisions in Singapore can only be a mounting worry.

Watch the documentary Regardless of Class here. Read more about the survey findings on how class – not race nor religion – is potentially Singapore’s most divisive fault line.

SINGAPORE: The financing, and the provision or collection of funds to finance the travel, of an individual to engage in terrorist training would become illegal in amendments proposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday (Oct 1).

This will expand the scope of activities prohibited under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act (TSOFA) and align Singapore’s laws with obligations under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178 – introduced in 2014 to address the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters.

Another proposal by MHA seeks to create a new money laundering offence under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act (CDSA): To possess or use property reasonably suspected of being criminal proceeds and not being able to satisfactorily account for it.

This will enable the prosecution of money mules who transport criminal proceeds for organised syndicates.

MHA is also aiming to prosecute instances of money laundering involving a foreign offence – so an act that is committed abroad, which amounts to a drug dealing or serious offence if committed in Singapore, will be presumed to be an offence in that foreign country.

In the same amendments bill tabled to Parliament, MHA is proposing enhancements to current penalties – for instance, to increase the maximum fine for failing to file a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) from S$20,000 to S$250,000 and three years’ jail for individuals, and S$500,000 for entities.

The STR needs to be filed whenever there is a suspicion that a property is linked to a drug dealing or serious offence.

For tipping off another person of a CDSA-related investigation or an STR, the fine could also be increased, from S$30,000 to S$250,000 and three years’ jail.

Additionally, failing to report bringing more than S$20,000 cash into Singapore could result in composition fines of up to S$20,000 plus a Court order confiscating the undeclared amount above S$20,000.

MHA is also suggesting to increase the S$1 million penalty for corporations convicted of terrorism financing, to the higher of either S$1 million or twice the value of the property involved or services rendered for terrorism financing.

The final proposed amendment pertains to improving the tackling of transnational crimes – by allowing the Suspicious Transaction Reporting Office (STRO) to share information with other jurisdictions which have endorsed the Egmont Charter and Principles for Information Exchange. 

This is an international arrangement to enhance cooperation between Financial Intelligence Units.

SINGAPORE: Global airport operators, faced with rising sea levels and more powerful storms as the climate changes, are starting to invest in measures including higher runways, seawalls and better drainage systems to future-proof immovable assets.

In early September, a seawall at Japan’s Kansai International Airport built on a reclaimed island near Osaka, was breached during Typhoon Jebi.

The runway was flooded and it took 17 days to fully restore airport operations, at a high cost to the region’s economy as well as the dozens of airlines that cancelled flights.

Major airports in Hong Kong, mainland China and North Carolina were also closed due to tropical storms last month.

Such incidents highlight the disaster risks to investors and insurers exposed to a sector with an estimated US$262 billion of projects under construction globally, according to Fitch Solutions.

“There is a kind of one-way direction with regards to the frequency and severity of climate change-related events,” said Fitch Solutions Head of Infrastructure Richard Marshall. “If people aren’t taking that seriously, that is a risk.”

Fifteen of the 50 most heavily trafficked airports globally are at an elevation of less than 30 feet above sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to a changing climate, including rising sea levels and associated higher storm surges.

“You see it at individual airports that are already seeing sea rise and are already dealing with water on their runway,” Airports Council International (ACI) Director General Angela Gittens said, citing examples in island nations including Vanuatu and the Maldives.

“But even in some of these mature economies they are having more storms, they are having to do more pumping. My old airport in Miami is in that scenario.”

A draft copy of an ACI policy paper reviewed by Reuters and due to be released this week warns of the rising risks to facilities from climate change. It encourages member airports to conduct risk assessments, develop mitigation measures and take it into account in future master plans.

The paper cites examples of forward-thinking airports that have taken climate change into account in planning, such as the US$12 billion Istanbul Grand Airport on the Black Sea, set to become one of the world’s largest airports when it opens next month.

INVESTOR INTEREST

Debt investors in particular have high exposure to airports, most of which are owned by governments or pension funds. Ratings agency Moody’s alone has US$174 billion of airport bonds under coverage.

Earl Heffintrayer, the lead analyst covering US airports at Moody’s, said the risk of climate change became apparent to investors after Superstorm Sandy closed major New York airports for days in 2012.

Sandy led to the cancellation of nearly 17,000 flights, costing airlines US$500 million in revenues and disrupting operations around the world, according to a 2017 presentation by Eurocontrol on climate change risk.

Investors are increasingly asking about mitigation plans at low-lying airports like San Francisco and Boston as they look to invest in bonds with terms of up to 30 years, Heffintrayer said.

San Francisco International Airport, built on reclaimed land that is slowly sinking, has completed a feasibility study on a US$383 million project to make the airport more resilient to sea level rises on its 12.9km of bay front shoreline by 2025.

“We are seeing a lot more thought going into protection against flood damage, catastrophe, making sure that the storm drains around the airport are fit for purpose,” said Gary Moran, head of Asia aviation at insurance broker Aon. “There definitely is a lot more thought going into potential further worsening in weather conditions further down the line.”

TAKING ACTION

Singapore’s Changi Airport, which has analysed scenarios out to 2100, has resurfaced its runways to provide for better drainage and is building a new terminal at a higher 5.5 metres above sea level to protect against rising seas.

Moran said such steps were prudent and would provide comfort to insurers.

“If you were to look at Singapore, if something was to happen at Changi in terms of weather-related risk, Singapore would have a problem,” he said. “There isn’t really too much of an alternative.”

Singapore expects sea levels to rise by 0.76 metres by 2100. Changi Airport declined to comment on the cost of the extra protection.

ACI, Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s were unable to provide Reuters with an estimate of the global cost of climate change protection at airports. The protective action is often folded into larger refurbishment and expansion projects, ratings agency analysts said.

In Australia, Brisbane Airport and located on reclaimed land on the coast at just 4 metres above sea level, is constructing a new runway 1 metre higher than it otherwise would have done, with a higher seawall and better drainage systems as sea levels rise.

Paul Coughlan, the director of Brisbane Airport’s new runway project, said the incremental cost of such moves was relatively low – for example the seawall cost around A$5 million (US$3.6 million) more than without taking into account sea level rises – but the potential benefits were big.

“At the end of the day, whether you are a believer in climate change or a disbeliever, doing a design that accounts for elevated sea levels, more intense rainfall, flooding considerations, that is just prudent,” Coughlan said.

“If you build it into your design philosophy from day one, you don’t pay that much of a premium and you have bought a lot of safeguards.”

SINGAPORE: The cause of the IT glitch resulting in more than 830 patients receiving medicine labelled with wrong dosage instructions has been traced to an IT vendor for the GPConnect computer system, Senior Minister of State for Health Lam Pin Min revealed on Monday (Oct 1).

Speaking in Parliament, he said investigations revealed that the IT vendor had made some changes to the application code for the system, which is run by public healthcare IT agency Integrated Health Information System (IHiS).

The glitch followed a system upgrade by the vendor implemented on Sep 1, which saw some GP clinics having problems where medication labels were printed incorrectly. Dr Lam said, while the correct medication and total quantity of medication were correctly dispensed, the system printed the wrong unit of measurement on the label.

Several clinics were aware of the error and manually corrected the dosage instruction on the label. Once notified, IHiS investigated the incident and informed all infected clinics from Sep 2, said Dr Lam.

IHiS has been monitoring the situation, and no further errors have been reported since Sep 3, he added. “Affected patients were monitored by the clinics, and to date, there have not been any reports of adverse effects,” he said.

Dr Lam explained that the changes made by the IT vendor to the application code resulted in the incorrect medication labels being printed. These changes were unrelated to the system upgrade.

“Hence, the user acceptance tests designed to evaluate the upgrade did not pick up the error,” he said. “The vendor also did not report any errors from any other tests done. 

He said that since the incident, additional rounds of testing have been conducted to ensure that existing functions within GPConnect are working as designed. The unit of measurement function is also being enhanced to prevent future errors. 

In response to a supplementary question from MP Intan Azura Mokhtar, who suggested that new technologies or new security measures could be applied to ensure the security of such data, Dr Lam said that this particular incident was a result of human error, and there will be measures to ensure such errors can be picked up. 

However, he noted that MOH would “seriously look” into her suggestion on new technologies.