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50 SIA, Scoot cabin crew members to volunteer at hospitals under new agreement

SINGAPORE — About 50 cabin crew members from Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Scoot will volunteer at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and Changi General Hospital from April, under a new agreement signed on Monday (Jan 15).

An SIA care ambassador at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

An SIA care ambassador at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

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SINGAPORE — About 50 cabin crew members from Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Scoot will volunteer at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and Changi General Hospital from April, under a new agreement signed on Monday (Jan 15). 

The Ministry of Health (MOH), Public Service Division (PSD) and SIA Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to "formalise the commitment" to work together on manpower planning and deployment for future national crises.

This includes training SIA and Scoot cabin crew members so they can take on various healthcare support roles.

For a start, the SG Healthcare Corps will facilitate the training and deployment of about 50 SIA and Scoot cabin crew members, who will volunteer as SIA Group Ambassadors.

These ambassadors will be part of a pool of around 200 trained SG Healthcare Corps volunteers who will serve alongside healthcare workers.

They will assist patients with daily living activities under the guidance of nurses and other healthcare workers.

The ambassadors will also help nurses with basic care procedures, such as relaying requests to nurses in charge of patients, measuring vital signs using machines, and helping to transfer patients from their beds to chairs, trollies, or commodes.

They may also help nurses with feeding patients or serving meals.

The agreement was signed by the Ministry of Health, Public Service Division and SIA Group.

The agreement builds on the collaboration that started in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, said MOH, PSD and SIA Group.

"The trilateral MOU strengthens our national collective resilience and agility to respond to future crises," they added.

MOH, PSD, and the SIA Group will collaborate in two key areas: Training and volunteer deployment of cabin crew to care roles, and tabletop exercises to stress test Singapore's crisis response protocols.

The MOU was signed by Permanent Secretary (Health) Chan Yeng Kit, Permanent Secretary (Development) Teoh Zsin Woon, and SIA CEO Goh Choon Phong.

"While the SIA Group had surplus manpower at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many public sector organisations needed more staff on the frontlines," said Mr Goh.

"Working closely with MOH and PSD, we successfully transitioned over 2,000 of our people to roles with various public agencies and healthcare institutions.

"Being exposed to different types of support roles also benefitted our people, who used their experience and new skills to enhance our customer service."

The MOU establishes a pathway to redeploy SIA Group staff "should a similar situation arise" in the future, he added.

SIA STAFF DEPLOYED DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, public agencies and healthcare institutions in Singapore faced an urgent manpower squeeze. 

SIA and Scoot, after reducing operations due to closed borders, worked with MOH and PSD to redeploy more than 2,000 staff members to frontline roles from March 2020.

This included over 900 cabin crew members who served as care ambassadors to support healthcare institutions in patient care, which freed up nurses and other healthcare staff to devote additional focus to patients who required more complex clinical care.

SIA and Scoot staff were also temporarily redeployed as transport ambassadors, contact tracing executives and social service office processing officers.

"When borders reopened and crisis operations stood down, the crew were able to pivot back to their jobs, enabling the SIA Group to recover quickly," said SIA Group, MOH and PSD. CNA

For more reports like this, visit cna.asia.

Related topics

Scoot SIA cabin crew MOH healthcare hospital

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