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Media Statement     
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Friday) : Nanyang Siang Pau has reported that the National Service Training Council at its meeting yesterday had recommended that the national service training programme should not be made compulsory for girls. 

It has taken three long years for the National Service Training Council to take up my public call to the Cabinet in April 2004 that if the Cabinet was not prepared to suspend the national service training programme, although it was “half-baked, ill-conceived and premature” from  poor conception, formulation and execution right from the beginning, the least the Cabinet should do was to make the national service training programme voluntary for girls, allowing parents who wish to do so to immediately withdraw their daughters from the programme and bring them home.   

The call followed the spate of fights, sexual harassment (including rape)  and breakdown of discipline in the national service programme. I had also pointed out at the time that out of 1,000 national service trainers, only 15 per cent were women when the ratio of male and female trainees were almost equal.  

But this call three years ago fell on deaf ears, including women Cabinet Ministers and the National Service Training Council. 

Public confidence in the national service  training programme has continued to plummet in the past three years because of the unending incidents, mishaps and disasters including avoidable deaths of trainees, to the extent that quite a substantial number of parents would agree with the sentiments of the letter-to-the editor in the Malay Mail yesterday: 

“I would gladly be slapped with the RM3,000 fine rather than be compensated the same amount for the untimely death of my son or daughter.” 

Some 365,000 18-year-olds would have undergone the three-month national service training programme by September  this year since it was launched in 2004, and over RM2 billion of taxpayers’ money  spent. 

The National Service Training programme should be a model of transparency and integrity with a full public accounting of the more than RM2 billion spent in the past four years to prove that every sen had been honestly used for the welfare of the trainees.  

I had expressed this concern even before the launching of the national service training programme in 2004. In August 2003, I had warned that the RM500 million national service training programme to start the follow year should be “a model of integrity, accountability and transparency without a whiff of scandal”, raising two specific questions:

• Firstly, the identity of the private company which had been given the contract to design and implement the computer programme to select 85,000 18-year-olds for the national service training programme, whether there had been an open tender, the value and full details of the contract.
• Secondly, the full details about the award of the multi-million ringgit contract for the uniforms for 100,000 recruits for the national service training  programme every year, and whether there was an open tender exercise.

As the Defence Minister in direct charge of the national service training programme, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak should present a White Paper at next week’s Parliament to give a detailed breakdown of the RM500 million expenditure a year since 2004  for the national service training programme, showing what, how, where, who and when expenditures under the programme were made.

Had the National Service Training Council ever focused on the accountability, transparency and integrity of the national service training programme, spending over RM2 billion since its inception?

The time has come for a total review of the national service training programme, including:

• The defects, flaws, mishaps, crimes  and tragedies of the national service training programme since its inception and costing RM500 million a year;
• End the cult of secrecy and  to allow elected representatives free and full access to the training camps to allay parental concerns about the welfare and safety of their children. 
• End the misnomer of calling  it a “national service” programme  as it has nothing to do with national defence or fighting a war but to instill national unity, patriotism and discipline.

Confucius had had warned  2,500 years ago when he said:

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.” 

The appropriate term is not “national service training programme” but “national youth service training programme” with the objectives of inculcating national unity, patriotism and discipline.

But even for the limited objective of the national youth service training programme” to inculcate national unity, patriotism and discipline, a review must be done whether such limited goals had been achieved and whether such a programme should be organized  for all student during their school years instead of have a very costly and most dubious one affecting only one-fifth of school-leavers.

(16/3/2007)