By Jonathan Tan
In a bid to holistically improve the lives of security officers, USE has collaborated with HPB to come up with a ‘Secure Your Health’ programme. It was launched on 3 December 2015 and was attended by NTUC Secretary-General (SG) Chan Chun Sing and Senior Minister of State Dr Amy Khor. The event also saw USE reveal its intention to enhance jobs in the industry with two new career tracks.
Keeping Health In Mind
The six-month long health pilot programme targets security officers who visit USE’s Customer Service Centre at Waterloo Centre for their Private Security Identification Card application and collection. While waiting, they can choose to receive a basic blood pressure test and a Body Mass Index measurement from the health coaches on site with health advice included.
In his address, SG Chan lauded the collaboration between USE and the HPB.
“Efforts like what we have today help our workers prepare themselves physically, mentally and emotionally for a longer career lifespan that goes beyond 60,” he said.
“We will continue to work with HPB to make sure that such programmes will continue to roll out to many other industries and sectors. Our job in NTUC is to ensure that we take care of our workers, but we can only do that with the support of partners like the HPB and the employers.”
Enhancing Career Development
As part of efforts by USE to improve the quality of jobs, it also shared its intention to explore new ways for security officers to enjoy better career progression, and make jobs in the security industry more appealing to Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs).
"We need to look at allowing our officers to diversify. They can go into security systems design, executive protection, security investigation and software integration. The field is actually quite broad. This is what the ‘Specialist’ track we’re proposing is about,” said USE Executive Secretary Steve Tan.
The second option is an Ad-hoc Specialist/Event track where USE hopes to grow and maintain a pool of licensed freelance officers to perform event-based security duties such as crowd control and threat screening.
