SINGAPORE - A mother of three young children was among 76 suspected drug offenders arrested in a five-day island-wide operation, the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) said. Two of her children, aged 12 and 14, were present when the 31-year-old was arrested at her residential unit. Ice, also known as methamphetamine, and drug paraphernalia were recovered from her bedroom, which her children had access to, said CNB in a Facebook post on March 15, adding that the children have since been placed in the care of their next of kin. According to an earlier report, checks by The Straits Times on reported cases in 2024 showed CNB officers rescued at least 10 children during drug raids at residential units that year. In 2023, four children were rescued during such raids. In a March 15 press release on the operation that took place from March 10 to 14, CNB said a total of about 462g of heroin, 357g of Ice, 58g of cannabis, 11g of ketamine, 46g of Ecstasy and 76 Erimin-5 tablets were seized. The items seized were estimated to be worth more than $97,800, said the bureau.     Some of the areas covered include Bukit Merah, Chai Chee, Tiong Bahru, Jurong and Yishun. On the morning of March 11, CNB officers arrested a 30-year-old Singaporean man in the vicinity of Tampines Street 82 for suspected drug trafficking offences. About 10g of Ice was recovered from him. After escorting him to his residential unit nearby, they conducted a search of the place and found 160g of Ice and 42g of Ecstasy. On the same morning, CNB officers raided another residential unit in Bishan Street 12 and arrested a 28-year-old Singaporean man and a 41-year-old Singaporean woman on suspicion of drug trafficking offences. A search of the unit recovered about 430g of heroin, 28g of ice, 14g of cannabis and 46 Erimin-5 tablets. Investigations into all arrested suspects are ongoing. A suspected drug offender being arrested by CNB officers in an island-wide drug operation from March 10 to 14.PHOTO: CNB In its annual statistics report released on Feb 12, CNB said that the number of new drug abusers totalled 966 in 2024, more than the 952 arrested in 2023. New abusers below the age of 30 made up more than half of all new cases for the second year in a row, according to the report. It is an offence to traffic or offer to traffic a controlled drug for oneself or on behalf of another person, whether or not that other person is in Singapore, as is preparing to traffic a controlled drug or offering to do so, the bureau said. Anyone found guilty of trafficking more than 15g of pure heroin (diamorphine), 250g of Ice or 500g of cannabis may face the mandatory death penalty.

SINGAPORE – The Land Transport Authority (LTA) called a tender for 660 new electric buses, comprising 360 three-door single-deck buses and 300 three-door double-deckers, on March 14. The authority expects these new buses to be delivered progressively by the end of 2027. Once these new electric buses join the fleet, the total number of buses running on batteries here will go up to 1,140. In December 2024, there were around 5,800 public buses in all.  The new tender comes after the authority purchased 360 new electric single-deck buses for $166.4 million in November 2023, in contracts awarded to Chinese automaker BYD and Cycle & Carriage Automotive. And in October 2024, LTA said it had purchased another 60 more electric buses from BYD. According to tender documents published on government procurement portal GeBiz, contractors have to equip the buses with an automatic fire suppression system that can detect and put out fires in specific areas. If a fire is detected on the bus, the system will be activated to produce an audio and visual alarm on the driver’s dashboard, in addition to reducing the speed of the bus to a speed that allows it to move to the side of the road, noted LTA.     In April 2024, the authority called for proposals on how to quickly remove a burnt electric bus from a multi-storey depot and submerge it in a water tank to prevent a fire from reigniting, in the event of such an incident. Besides the fire suppression system, these new buses also need to be fitted with on-board surveillance systems to improve passenger and staff safety. LTA said these surveillance systems should have collision detection and warning capabilities, so that other vehicles, pedestrians or cyclists in close proximity all around the bus can be spotted. Alerts will also be sounded to the driver. These new buses will also be equipped with information display systems that can provide commuters with visual and audio information on their journeys. The on-board information display systems must be able to show ad hoc announcements and information on rail replacement services or bridging bus services, among others. The tender for these new buses will close at 4pm on May 22. LTA said in a Facebook post that this tender supports its goal of a public bus fleet running on cleaner energy by 2040. It added that it will be procuring more than 2,000 electric buses over the next five years. The Straits Times previously reported that the Government plans to refresh Singapore’s public bus fleet so that half of them will run on batteries by 2030. Correction note: An earlier version of this story stated that there will be 1,080 electric buses once the latest set of buses joins the fleet. This is incorrect. There will be 1,140 electric buses.

SINGAPORE – A shared cooling system connecting seven buildings in Tampines began operations in early March, and talks are under way to bring more neighbouring buildings into the network. Tampines is Singapore’s first town centre to be retrofitted with this system. The project is the first of its kind to be built on already developed land. In this distributed district cooling network, which will slash the environmental cost of air-conditioning, some buildings in the town centre have taken over the cooling load for others. Such a shared system will help to cut carbon emissions, save energy and enhance efficiency through economies of scale, said SP Group, which built and operates the system, on March 14. Mr S. Harsha, managing director for sustainable energy solutions at SP Group, said: “For years, we have understood the crucial role air-conditioning plays in our tropical climate, but traditional in-building air-conditioning systems, especially the ones in older buildings, are usually less efficient and designed with standby capacity. “These buildings consume vast amounts of energy for cooling, and many of them will be around for years to come. As we strive to reduce our carbon footprint and build a greener Singapore, we need to implement a more sustainable cooling solution that can be adapted for existing buildings.” In district cooling technology, water is chilled in a centralised location and then sent through a network to multiple buildings. In conventional cooling systems, individual buildings have their own chillers. This cooling network will help the town centre cut its carbon emissions by 1,000 tonnes a year, equivalent to removing 910 cars from the roads. It will also achieve energy savings of more than 2.3 million kilowatt-hours a year, enough to power over 710 three-room Housing Board households for a year. About 25,000 sq ft of space previously used by the several chiller plants can also be repurposed, SP Group said. In addition, those buildings will save on the cost of maintaining the equipment. The seven buildings connected to the network are Century Square, CPF Tampines Building, Income at Tampines Junction, OCBC Tampines Centre 2, Our Tampines Hub, Tampines Mall and Tampines 1. Instead of constructing a new centralised cooling plant, the network uses the existing chiller plants of Century Square, Our Tampines Hub and Tampines 1. These were selected to be the chilled water supply nodes as evaluations showed they had excess cooling capacity and superior energy efficiency. They supply the chilled water through an underground pipe about 1.3km long to the other buildings in the network.   Construction began in March 2023 to retrofit the buildings and install infrastructure such as chilled water pipes. Mr Harsha said the Tampines town centre is a densely built environment, lacking the space to build a district cooling plant. “What we have done here today is not just launch the Tampines distributed district cooling network; we have also developed a blueprint or reference architecture that can be used to implement a similar concept in other precincts or districts and other areas where it’s fairly built up,” he said. But given the density of the area, it was challenging to build the network while minimising inconvenience and disruption to residents, he added. To tackle this, SP Group regularly engaged with building owners, residents and the public to mitigate the inconvenience to the community over the two years of construction. Tampines is the first town centre retrofitted with the shared cooling system.ST PHOTO: AZMI ATHNI Mr David Chua, chief investment officer at Income Insurance, which owns one of the buildings receiving the chilled water, said the network allows the building to better optimise energy efficiency. “As a building owner, the implementation of the network will free up space with the removal of air-conditioning equipment which is no longer needed, and we can potentially consider other sustainable practices such as solar renewable energy in the future.” For the next phase, SP Group is in discussions to add seven more buildings in the vicinity to the network, further enhancing Tampines’ ambitions to be an eco-town. The launch of the network is a key milestone in the Tampines eco-town masterplan, which serves as a blueprint for how cities can be built and lived in sustainably, said Tampines GRC MP Masagos Zulkifli at the launch event on March 14. The brownfield project is one of the efforts in the masterplan – which was created in line with the Singapore Green Plan 2030, a national blueprint for sustainability targets. “We are not just constructing green infrastructure, we are enabling every resident to live the green life,” said Mr Masagos, who is also Minister for Social and Family Development.

SINGAPORE: A man was sentenced to 15 months' jail on Friday (Mar 14) for molesting a male patient while taking his blood pressure.  Danisha Nur Delisa Dewa, 36, was a basic care assistant at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital attending to the victim at the time of his offence. He had been found guilty of a single charge of molest following a trial.  On Jan 27, 2023, the victim - who cannot be named due to a gag order - was at the hospital's ambulatory ward for a right shoulder surgery. He was seated on a recliner chair dressed in a hospital gown.  Danisha approached the victim at about 2.30pm to 3pm, under the pretext of checking his vital signs, according to the prosecution, represented by Deputy Public Prosecutor Ethan Lee. Danisha then drew the curtain around the chair, lifted the victim's hospital gown and asked if he was wearing underwear. He did so to test the victim's reaction to an intrusive action, Mr Lee said.  After Danisha placed a blood pressure band around the victim's right arm and started the blood pressure machine, he pressed the victim's private parts three times while asking if the victim felt any pain.  The victim initially thought this was part of the medical procedure. But he later realised that it was not, as other nurses had not done so. He also asked other staff in order to find out if the contact was normal. Ng Teng Fong General Hospital previously said that Danisha left his post on Jun 23, 2023 after completing his employment contract. Mr Lee argued that Danisha had drawn the curtain to hide his actions, and that his queries to the victim were to disguise the molest as part of normal medical procedure.  Danisha's defence was a bare denial of the offences. He said that he approached the victim to take his vital signs, but denied drawing the curtain fully, lifting the patient's hospital gown or pressing on his private parts.  He suggested that the victim made up the allegations as he was "homophobic" and Danisha was "a LGBTQ" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer). The prosecution sought 15 to 18 months' jail, citing several aggravating factors. Danisha had abused his position of trust and used deception to commit the offence, Mr Lee said.  "The victim stated that the offence was 'shocking' and 'unexpected' to him, and that he felt 'ashamed to talk about it', 'uncomfortable' and 'uneasy', Mr Lee added.  For molest, Danisha could have been jailed up to three years, fined, caned, or punished with any combination of the penalties. Source: CNA/wt(gr)

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