SAF lifts safety timeout, exercise in Australia continues
The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) lifted its army-wide safety timeout on Wednesday (7 November), with soldiers progressively returning to training from Thursday.
The safety timeout was imposed after the death of full-time national serviceman Liu Kai last Saturday. The 22-year-old transport operator was involved in a vehicular incident at the Jalan Murai training area.
The safety timeout applied to training both in Singapore and overseas, including Exercise Trident, a joint exercise between the SAF and the Australian Defence Force at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, Australia.
About 1,200 SAF personnel are taking part in the exercise, which ends on 15 November. It is the third and final phase of Exercise Wallaby, the SAF’s largest overseas training exercise, which began in September and involved more than 3,800 personnel.
During the timeout, the troops went through safety reviews, table-top exercises, specific drills and rehearsals to prepare for the field training.
“The troops have since completed their reviews of all appropriate safety measures and, along with the rest of the Army, will progressively resume training from 8 November, 2018,” SAF said in a post on its Facebook page.
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