What is one or two deaths - NS to stay!

NST Online, Friday May 9, 2008

National service to stay despite trainee's death
By : June Ramli

The National Service programme will not be scrapped despite another death among the 18 year old trainees. National Service Training Department director-general Datuk Abdul Hadi Awang Kecil reiterated that the training programme will not be scrapped “just because of one or two deaths.

“It is our policy that the NS camps go on. What we are doing now is to rectify the problem,” he told the New Straits Times.

He was commenting on calls by bloggers for the scrapping of the programme following the death of 18 year-old Too Hui Min on Wednesday. She was the 16th NS trainee to have died during training since the programme was incorporated four years ago.

Abdul Hadi said the department’s officials will be meeting Health Ministry officials on June 3 to decide on a technical committee to make it compulsory for all trainees to undergo health check-ups before entering the three-month programme.

Several departments have to streamline the processes before the health check-ups can be done.
In Too’s case, Abdul Hadi said the trainee had a colon problem.

“She might have been suffering from it for a long time and did not know about it until her death, ” he said.

He said the department was doing its best to ensure that the facilities in the camp are safe, by getting the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to certify the campus premises.

The NS programme is a brainchild of the National Service Training Council chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye. Participants, aged 18 years old, go through a three-month programme likened like a summer camp.