Indian-Origin Singaporean Gets Public Spiritedness Award For Saving Chinese Man's Life

Singapore: Singapore on Wednesday honoured a 58-year-old Indian-origin man with Public Spiritedness Award for his life-saving efforts to help an elderly unconscious Chinese man.

U Silvakumar, a military expert, put his life-saving instincts to pratice and used cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) process to help the Chinese man who was lying unconscious near a Hindu temple before the ambulance arrived on Sunday.

News of Silvakumar's efforts made rounds online after a Facebook photo of him and other Hindu devotees helping the elderly man was posted on the social networking site.

For his efforts, Silvakumar was honoured with the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) Public Spiritedness Award, the Channel News Asia reported.

In a Facebook post, SCDF said on Wednesday that the group's response was the "epitome of #CommunityFirstResponders".

"First at scene, first to render assistance. Community first response transcends all boundaries, and can be embraced by anyone and everyone," it said.

Singaporean-Indian Hindus, descendents of the early immigrants, participate infire-walking festivals called Theemithi, taking religious vows in exchange for a wish or blessing from the goddess Draupadi every year.

The fire-walking was held at Singapore's oldest Hindu temples Sri Mariamman Temple at 1.00 am on Sunday.

It is a popular annual festival in which even Chinese people take part while many tourists click photographs as they consider it a unique event.

Singapore's Home Minister K Shanmugam, who was among the devotees, said,"You see Indians, Hindus, taking part, but you also see others, non-Indians taking part. It's really something unique about Singapore."

CPR is an emergency procedure that combines chest compression often with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest.

The Public Spiritedness Award is given to people who have displayed courageous or outstanding deeds to save lives.