Girl Dies in PLKN?

Malaysian family to sue government over daughter's death during national service

AP - Monday, May 12KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - The family of a Malaysian teenager who died during National Service training said Sunday they plan to sue the government for negligence.



Too Hui Min, 18, complained of an upset stomach Wednesday during firearms training at a jungle camp in central Selangor state and died soon after she was taken to a hospital. Officials said a colon infection was the cause of her death.

She was the 16th trainee to die since the National Service training began four years ago, prompting renewed calls for the character-building program for young people to be scrapped.

Her father, Too Jong Sing, said they were seeking legal redress because they did not believe she died of a colon infection. Hui Min did not have any health problems, he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak has insisted the training program will continue, but the government plans to send all trainees for medical checkups at public and private hospitals.

At present, trainees only make a declaration of their health status before they join the three-month program. Officials have maintained that previous deaths at camps were mostly due to illnesses beyond trainers' control.

The three-month program, during which trainees are based in forest camps, includes community service and military-style physical training. The program aims to instill discipline, patriotism and racial unity among teenagers, but has often been criticized for alleged lack of supervision and disciplinary problems.

Quote :

Tunku Abdul Aziz: Will they never learn?
By : Tunku Abdul Aziz

Should national military service replace the present national service?

The current garden-variety "national service" should be scrapped because it is not meeting the objective of integrating young people of this country, and it costs too much with little to show for it.

The writer is a former special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on ethics. He can be contacted at tunkua@gmail.com.

Disassociate yourself from NS, Lee
Sabah Fan | Jun 11, 08 4:16pm

I refer to National Service Training Council Chairperson Lee Lam Thye’s letter.

There seems to be a tinge of frustration in his letter as he clearly states that he spends almost 90% of his time on NS duties, yet has no executive powers. Meaning he was appointed because of his past record, credibility and reputation - but just to whitewash the image of a harebrained scheme.

I therefore respectfully ask Lee to resign and disassociate himslef from the NS nonsense, not because of any failure on his part, but rather to protect and maintain his national image as my hero since his days as the Bukit Bintang MP, carrying a trusty old typewriter to improve the lives of his people in the Bukit Bintang constituency.

I further justify my request based on the facts he stated in his letter.

1. You visited 60 NS camps to give motivational talks and to remind camp commandants and deputies to ensure proper management. Now, if these commandants are not HP6 (half past six) officers, you do not have to do all that.

2. You only provide feedback, complaints and suggestion to the NS department. If they have listened to your advice, I doubt very much that 16 deaths would have occurred. As it is, the parents can only see you as their target when something goes wrong but nothing so far has been directed to the NS department which has all the ‘executive powers’. Do you want to continue as a scapegoat, Tan Sri?

3. The NS camp commandants take directives from NS director-general and not from your council meaning you and your council are redundant, just serving a PR function.

4. Your recommendation for compulsory health checks has been ignored and I believe the health ministry said no money. Yet they have already spent millions on this NS nonsense. Plenty of money on contracts for NS uniforms, camps, food etc but no money for medical checks?

5. Waiting 24 hours before a sick trainee needs to be sent to a hospital is idiotically ridiculous when you don't have a qualified medic to make that decision in an NS camp. People can die within an hour if not given prompt treatment.

6. Your call for each death to be thoroughly investigated with transparency has yet to be followed in spite of a total 16 deaths. It seems that so far, there have been 16 cover-ups.

7. You may have introduced a lot of improvements to the NS since 2004, but all that has no meaning to the dead or their grieving families.

8. You maintained the NS is still good for discipline and character-building, but being compulsory makes it smell too fishy for comfort. This country is already overloaded with uniformed units and the preoccupation of the present government with uniforms is almost like the communist addiction to totalitarian power.

There is already the compulsory askar wataniah (volunteer corps) at the universities and colleges and at other institutions such as UiTM. We already have Rela, reserve army and police cadets in addition to the serving uniformed forces.

All these uniforms have failed to stamp out corruption, the number one disease in this country.

However, the most notorious uniform in this country is NS one which is stained with the highest number of deaths per year. Others have argued that there are weaklings amongst the NS thousands of trainees and deaths are bound to happen even if there were no NS. Yes, I am a weakling myself and would have probably died at an NS camp if the NS was introduced earlier.

That does not justify spending my taxes to weed out the weaklings. Let them do it on their own. On the other hand, I have yet to see the benefits of NS considering that all the ministers and YBs from the government have yet to send their children to these camps.

Therefore, please Lee Lam Thye, as my hero since my schoolboy days, I simply beg of you to disassociate yourself from this NS scheme.

NS programme safety linked to the contracts

FRom Malaysiakini
Maximum Madness Man | Jul 24, 08 5:37pm
When the National Service programme was first announced and the contractors identified, I was tasked by my company to ‘market’ the insurance needs of the programme and we began by writing to all the vendors.

The contractors were quite responsive and at that point of time, the defence ministry wanted them to provide bank or insurance guarantees for the funds that would be disbursed to them, which were quite sizeable.

If I am not mistaken, the amount was more than RM5 million each per year. The contract was for two or three years minimum.

Please do note that this was at the early stage of the programme and contractors were supposed to provide the necessary collateral as well. However, I was made to understand that the collateral would also be taken care of by the ministry!

My impression is that, at that point of time and still, the aim of the programme was for contractors to make lots of money. However, that is not the main issue with me.

My concern is that the contractors cut short on their supplies. For example, there were problems sourcing fire proof tents as vendors specialising in them could not produce the huge quantities needed.

Therefore, in the end, the defence ministry settled on fire retardant tents which were cheaper. It is not clear if the ministry set any minimum specifications or if the contractors were free to choose their own specs.

The best part is that the ministry did not reduce the original funding for the tents. This meant extra cash for the contractors.

Won’t contractors then be tempted to supply cheap tents to maximise their profits? Is this not a corrupt practice? More worrying, are the cheaper tents safe for our boys and girls?

My son may be drafted in two years time, hence my concern. Tents may not be in use in the future, but as a parent I have the right to know if the programme is safe given the high number of deaths that have occurred in the camps.

The present government will not abandon this programme as it would negatively affect the interested parties.

The programme was outsourced to non-military companies or companies that specialised in team-building (they awarded one contract to a hotelier) and this exacerbates my concern.

This programme does not have my support (my boys are active Boy Scouts and love the outdoors) and I have been praying that this programme will be cancelled soon.

My prayers too, in the meantime, that a major disaster does not occur. Would it be too much to ask for an investigation into the safety aspects of the NS sites?

Friday August 1, 2008
The Star

Are our children safe during NS training?

THE first thing that came to my mind when I read about the RM100mil logistics scandal in The Star (July 31) was how widespread is it?

It is an open secret that such abuses happen because under-counter payments are made in return for supply contracts and these are a common occurrence.

Several of the last Auditor-General reports suggested as much. It is good that the police are coming out into the open with this shameful secret. Let us hope other government departments or agencies similarly afflicted will do likewise before they are caught and shamed in public.

But in this particular instance, how many of those dubious suppliers are also involved in supplying similar equipment to the National Service trainees?

I am sure this is on the minds of many parents whose children might be using and wearing substandard equipment and boots while in training.

What risk would our children be taking and if indeed there are such crooked suppliers involved and what action will be taken to rectify the situation before a tragedy occurs?

It is not a question of money. Lives and serious injuries to body and limbs are at stake here.

A reassurance from the National Service authorities is in order.

Last but not least, such scams happen because the award of these contracts lacks transparency.

Terminating or blacklisting the errant suppliers is a waste of time.

They can come back under the guise of another company and with their contacts among those awarding the contracts, they will be back in business in no time.

Calling for open tenders properly scrutinised by committees with integrity will reduce, if not eliminate, these scourges.

TAXPAYER,
Johor Baru.

Declare National Service a Failure

Downloaded from MT
Tuesday, 19 August 2008 21:19

Watching the continued coverage of UITM undergraduates protesting and screaming all sorts of seditious statements whilst the police and govt stand by is not only a sad reflection of the state of the country but also the future of this country.


Whilst many may have their own views on the end products of UITM, at the bare bones they are still young Malaysians. Malaysians who are the future of this country. I am able to forgive they robust stand and total conviction for a cause but what they fail to realise are the following:-



Every right minded employer will now think twice about employing any of these graduates since they will all know the racist, self supreme, warped and self abosorbed thinking they have. In a globalised economy , there is no place for xenophobia.
Every right minded investor will think twice since it appears to the world that Malaysia (principally Malays) are not open to competition nor is it open to critical thought. In every organisation, there will be critical thought. That banter and discussion is what fleshes out the best ideas. Its called meetings. A simple word that a so-called graduate cannot phatom has no place in an economy.
Lest these young ones feel that they are destined for greatness in Malaysia, they are sorely wrong. Simple maths of dwindling investments, increased competition (read: two jobs= 1000 applications) and highly motivated graduates from other races should have made reality dawn in their mushy mind.


Putting aside economics and realities of the working world, if we drill deeper, we find something that truly is worrying for every Malaysian, of every race.

In a country with some of the best infrastructure (noted not designed with maturity) and exposure to world views via ASTRO, Internet etc, critical thought and courage and maturity to stand up (without crutches) for a fellow countryman is left wanting.

Against this landscape, we can safely assume that National Service which has its main tenants of bringing the various differing races together has been a failure. Agreed, most of us have our views of National Service and comments on the media adverts of all races giving high fives and building a fire together. Below this proverbial veneer lies the absolute envy, hatred and racism of this country.

The UITM fiasco and the continuing political mileage being milked by various quarters are in my opinion the death kneel for all UITM graduates and also this country.

I ache for the UITM student who did not participate in the protest and was silently hoping for all this to go away for he needs the job and needs the money to pay for his sister who intends to study a course and not be a statistic with Mat Rempits or holed up in a foreign prison for drug charges. But alas,this student will also be branded as with all the others.

My advise to UITM, its students and its leaders- if you think this Barisan Gov't has a job waiting on a platter for u. Think again. Their jobs are already in trouble and they may not have one come Oct 2008.

If you think a multinational is going to employ you as the gov't will impose rules to employ you. Think again. Those rules may work previously. Now the investors will show you with their feet.

If you think any company worth its salt that will be able to pay the kind of salaries that you dream about is going to employ you, think again. They know your true colour. No amount of interview tactics and strategy will help you now.

With your lack of critical thought, understanding, solidarity with your fellow countrymen and long term vision, you have sealed your destiny.

But then, you are an undergraduate in a university. You already knew that.



TaskForce 101