Formation of Home Team Career Transition Office in Helping Retired Officers Find New Employment

Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Home Affairs since the formation of the Home Team Career Transition Office (a) what is the percentage of retired officers who are assisted in finding new employment; (b) how has the Ministry developed new ways to prepare retiring officers for new careers; and (c) whether the Ministry is working with the Public Service Division to redeploy such officers within the Civil Service.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) set up the Career Transition Office (CTO) for Home Team officers in April 2016.

CTO will seek to help retiring officers. Some officers will be suitable to be re-employed within the Home Team, depending on the nature of their work, and manpower needs. CTO will also help the other retiring officers. This will include assisting them in finding new employment. MHA has now set up a structured framework for this. The retiring officers will be engaged early to consider their options. A number of initiatives have been launched.

(a) We give officers days off to attend courses to learn new skills to enhance their employability after retirement, and provide subsidies to defray the cost of such courses;

(b) we organise workshops to help officers identify the occupations that would suit them, and to guide them on reskilling or upskilling to improve their employment prospects;

(c) we have begun a secondment and job attachment programme to help officers transit into their post-retirement career. Officers may apply for secondment to another public agency or to take up a job attachment in a private sector company prior to their retirement, to try out potential job opportunities. This will help both the officer and the prospective employer assess the fit before formal employment. During this period of secondment or job attachment, which can extend up to three months, officers would continue to receive their salaries from their Home Team departments; and

(d) we also organise networking sessions with prospective employers for our retiring officers. Since this initiative started in the middle of last year, we have organised three such sessions, attended by about 50 officers at each session.

We also actively engage private sector companies and public sector agencies to source for suitable job opportunities for our officers. In 2017, CTO publicised more than 150 job openings in sectors, such as engineering, logistics and private security, to retiring Home Team officers. Officers are also encouraged to use the internal job portal developed by the Public Service Division to explore job opportunities in the Public Service.

The Ministry is committed to assisting retiring officers, as the steps set out above, show.