Foreign recruitment agencies from new sources tapped to hire auxiliary police officers for Singapore

BENGALURU/TAIPEI/CHONGQING/MANILA - For the 30-something Sri Lankan, his job as an auxiliary police officer (APO) at Singapore’s Changi Airport is the “best chance” to provide for his family, which is struggling to make ends meet during Sri Lanka’s economic downturn.

However, it is not just about the salary, he told The Straits Times, requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

He was thrilled about having “grown in skill, communication and discipline” in just a few months in Singapore.

“Although I work in a new country amid new cultures, my employers treat me well, and I have never faced any discrimination from Singaporeans,” he said, adding that the only time he felt lonely was when he missed his baby back home.

The Sri Lankan constable is one of the recent foreign recruits in Singapore’s auxiliary police force, which has been hiring from countries such as Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Myanmar, China and India since January 2024, in addition to the older sources of Malaysia and Taiwan. 

APOs are security police hired by private companies called auxiliary police forces (APFs) to supplement police work. They are deployed at private and public premises, typically for crowd control, protection of major installations, security screenings or traffic regulation. Some of them may be armed, but they do not investigate crimes.

In 2024, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs expanded the list of countries and territories from which the APFs can hire officers, because of Singapore’s shrinking workforce and the growing need for security services. 

Since 2017, Singapore has been recruiting APOs from Taiwan and Malaysia. As at November 2023, Malaysians and Taiwanese made up approximately 32 per cent of all APOs, with the remaining 68 per cent Singaporean.

Speaking during the parliamentary debate on the Ministry of Home Affairs’ budget on March 4, Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo said APOs have also been recruited from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, the Philippines, India and China.

These new officers made up about 3 per cent of the total APO workforce as at December 2024.

In the past year, Singapore APFs have been advertising in Sri Lanka, India, China and the Philippines. 

Since January 2024, the government-run Sri Lankan Foreign Employment Agency (SLFEA) has sent 61 APO recruits to Singapore. The latest batch was sent in December 2024. 

“Lots of Sri Lankans are interested in these security jobs because of the good salary and high standard of accommodation in Singapore,” Ms Kalani Gamage, manager of business promotions at the SLFEA, told ST. “More than 5,000 had applied, and people were selected after passing English interviews and physical fitness tests.”

The monthly salary of Singapore APOs mentioned in the advertisements in Sri Lanka is between $1,000 and $1,700, which works out to about 222,000 to 377,440 Sri Lankan rupees. This is three to four times the average monthly salary in Sri Lanka, which is around 65,000 Sri Lankan rupees. 

Applicants with English proficiency and at least three GCE N or O levels are eligible. Foreign APOs told ST they had to pass a physical fitness test that included doing sit-ups and push-ups as well as completing a 2.4km run in 15 minutes. 

Among the six batches of Sri Lankan APOs are former air force and army personnel, former police cadets, engineers, bankers and other professionals from across the country, said the SLFEA. They are between 21 and 39 years of age. 

In October 2024, the upper age limit for foreign APOs was reduced to 35 years, Ms Gamage said. ST was not able to confirm if other recruitment agencies in Sri Lanka were also recruiting APOs. 

In China, recruitment agencies advertise on social media, highlighting the benefits of being an APO in Singapore.

An agency in eastern Shandong province described in a 35-second video on Douyin, China’s TikTok-like video app, dated Oct 10, 2024, that the monthly salary for an APO is $3,000, almost five times that of a similar position in China, which pays 3,000 yuan (S$555). The recruiter added that while similar jobs in China are stable and offer government benefits, they have comparatively little room for progression.

The Chinese advertisement called for applicants who are degree holders, conversant in English and below the age of 35. At the end of the ad, the recruiter said the positions were for airport security.  

In the Philippines, Manila-based recruitment agency M and M Placement International began advertising APO positions in Singapore in late January, without revealing the salary.

Instead, the company laid out strict qualifications: Applicants must be under 35, physically and mentally fit, with normal colour vision, a body mass index of 27 or lower, and a minimum height of 160cm for women and 165cm for men.

The Philippine agency said criminology graduates are preferred, but other degree holders may apply. Visible tattoos are not allowed. A clean credit record, clearance from the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation and a valid passport are mandatory.

Ms Claribel Low, a senior analyst researching social cohesion at NTU’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the places from which Singapore is recruiting APOs “were clearly not chosen randomly”, and reflect the ethnic composition of the city-state.

She added that there is already a significant number of residents in Singapore who are from the places where Singapore is hiring auxiliary police officers.

“We have common languages and a lot of cultural similarities. Eventually, it will be easier for workers from these countries (and territories) to integrate into Singapore, and for Singaporeans to also get used to them,” said Ms Low.

Ethnic Chinese make up about 75 per cent of Singapore’s population, while Malays account for 14 per cent and Indians 9 per cent.

“The Singapore Government may also have picked these countries (and territories) with an interest in maintaining the categories of communities in its Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others model.

“They may not hire too many people of a certain ethnic background to avoid throwing the balance off. This may also assuage any anxieties about immigrant security workers, because they will integrate quicker into society,” said Ms Low.

The Singapore Government expanded the list of places from which to recruit APOs after facing difficulty in retaining existing auxiliary police officers from Taiwan. 

Singapore’s auxiliary police forces are still hiring officers from Taiwan, but numbers have dropped significantly, by 60 per cent, since 2017 when the practice began. 

Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam noted that while the hiring of Taiwanese APOs has been “generally positive”, it has been a “challenge to recruit and keep them”.

This was due to the demanding nature of public-facing security work, improved job opportunities and prospects in Taiwan, a desire to settle down with a family, and homesickness, the Home Affairs Minister said in his written reply to a parliamentary question in January 2024.

Speaking to ST, Mr Owen Tseng, business manager at Inter Island Group, a recruitment services company, said his firm has placed around 130 Taiwanese to work as APOs in Singapore over the past five years.

In January 2025, about 10 Taiwanese were sent to Singapore to be APOs. 

When the programme first began, it was much talked about in Taiwan, but the prospect of being an auxiliary police officer has since become less attractive, he said. 

One common complaint about the job among Taiwanese officers who have since returned home is the “unequal treatment” that APOs receive when it comes to assignments, Mr Tseng said.

Some officers have a cushy job working in the air-conditioned airport, while others have to stand outside in the heat for many hours at a time, he said.

The requirements of becoming an auxiliary police officer are also not low – basic proficiency in English is necessary, which Mr Tseng says is not applicable to the majority of Taiwanese.

Those who are able to communicate in English have more job opportunities in Taiwan and thus would have the option to choose to do something else. 

Applicants also have to be university graduates and cannot have a criminal record.

Still, for those who are interested in going, the salary offered remains attractive. 

Typically, the monthly salary of an auxiliary police officer in Singapore is about $3,600, which is around NT$89,000.

That is much higher than Taiwan’s 2024 average monthly salary of NT$46,450, according to government statistics.

Addressing the anxiety among some Singaporeans about foreign APOs, as is apparent in some online discussions, NTU’s Ms Low said the roles of private-sector auxiliary police and emergency medical workers “do not involve much sensitivity or sharing of confidential information”.

Filling job gaps in Singapore with foreign workers is inevitable today “because of the higher educational attainment and changing aspirations of Singaporeans in the past few decades”, she said.

“Most Singaporeans want jobs that are higher-paying and less demanding” than auxiliary police work or emergency medical services, which foreigners are being recruited for today, Ms Low added.