Addressing the deaths of full-time national servicemen, like that of the PTE Dominique Sarron Lee in a Youtube video, Ivy Singh-Lim, a well known farmpreneur said that the matter at hand is not if the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) used 2 hand grenades or 6, but if SAF had exercised sufficient caution to ensure that our kids are not killed in a non-war situation.
Pte Lee died of an allergic reaction in a training exercise after a platoon commander threw six smoke grenades, even though regulations specified no more than two grenades were to have been used.
Ms Singh-Lim further questioned why SAF cannot adopt a proper caring attitude once a tragedy occurs and provide a better closure for the parents of the dead soldier. That way, the loved ones will slowly come to accept the death of their son, she said.
“We must be very transparent about how much compensation is given for this child – for any child – that is killed,” Ms Singh-Lim advocated in the video.
“People have children because they hope that the child will support them in their old age, and where a child is lost to some tragic circumstance, they must have some kind of compensation and comfort that ‘ok I have suffered this tragedy, but it’s not for the rest of my life. Somehow, I can be taken care of in my old age’. So SAF should be very transparent,” she added.
[fvplayer src=”http://youtube.com/watch?v=lMmmQKADuPw”]