Courtesy Call

Her Excellency Ms. Mary Seet-Cheng, Singapore’s Non-Resident High Commissioner to the Republic of Fiji and Singapore’s Non-Resident Ambassador to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) was accorded a quarter guard ceremony of welcome during a courtesy call to the Commissioner of Police Brigadier General Sitiveni Qiliho this past week.

Fruitful discussions were held not only on further strengthening support towards the Fiji Police Force but to Pacific law enforcement partners through the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police currently chaired by Fiji’s Commissioner of Police.

The Singapore Police have supported the Fiji Police in various specialized training programs in Narcotics, Cyber Crime and Investigations to name a few, as well as support of the Fiji Police’s participation as observers at the ASEANAPOL.

Discussions were also held on enhancing police cooperation efforts through existing law enforcement partners based out of Singapore such as the INTERPOL’s Global Complex for Innovation.

Brigadier General Qiliho said the Fiji Police is appreciative of the support shown by the Singapore Police whereby Fiji and the Pacific region have benefitted.

“We have common law enforcement challenges that must be addressed as a Pacific region, and we are always appreciative of our partners from bigger nations who have supported our regional capacity building programmes”.

“As the Chair of the PICP a forum where we can get the needs of the smaller island countries and reach out to bigger countries, when we engage in any training, we make sure to make it a regional one”.

High Commissioner Seet-Cheng said she hopes to strengthen police cooperation efforts particularly as Singapore has the capacity to offer training in niche areas of policing.

She also encouraged the head of the Fiji Police to explore training opportunities offered through the Singapore Cooperation Program.

“The Singapore Cooperation Program was set up in 1992 as a way for Singapore to build up the capacity of other countries in their development journey and we offer training programs mostly in Singapore.

We were able to do some regional programmes as well”.

The Singapore Cooperation Programme (SCP) was established to bring together under one framework the various technical assistance programmes offered by Singapore.

Through the SCP, the range and number of training programmes were increased to share Singapore’s development experience with other developing countries.

Fiji established diplomatic relations with the Republic of Singapore on 30th November 1971.