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.

Too Hui Min - latest NS statistic

The Star, Friday May 9, 2008

Family wants to know why girl not sent to hospital earlier

By DHARMENDER SINGH

KUALA SELANGOR: National service (NS) trainee Too Hui Min (pic) had complained of constipation for three days before she died and her family wants to know why camp officials did not take her to the hospital earlier.

Her mother, Chin Kwee Choo, 52, said she was told by the Geo Kosmo National Service Training Camp staff in Kuala Kubu Baru that her daughter had complained of constipation for several days.

“But they said she only started to complain of pain when she went to the shooting range in Banting on Wednesday morning,” she said, adding that even then the camp authorities should have taken her to the hospital at once.

She said someone from the camp called her four times on Wednesday, with the first call at 8pm, to say that Hui Min was being taken to hospital, followed by another call at 9pm to say she was having problems urinating.

At 10pm Chin was told that her daughter would be warded and the final call, just before 11pm, was to tell her of Hui Min's death.

NS Training Department director-general Datuk Abdul Hadi Awang Kechil said Hui Min died on Wednesday at 10.45pm at the Slim River Hospital in Perak.

The teenager and 177 other trainees had chicken rice for lunch while training at the shooting range in Jugra Banting, Selangor. They arrived at the range at 1.45pm.

Shocking news: Hui Min’s sister Hui Wen (left) and cousin Ching Ya Shi grieving over the sudden death of the trainee in Kuala Selangor yesterday.

“We are in a state of disbelief because she was an active and healthy 18-year-old,“ the distraught mother said. She has two other children.

Chin said Hui Min, who scored 7As in her SPM examination last year, was to enter Form Six at SMK Bukit Kuda in Klang on Monday.

“She was to come home today (yesterday) and apply to be exempted from the rest of the training to attend school but instead we are bringing her body back. My daughter is gone.”

She said the last time they spoke to Hui Min was when she called home on Monday. Soon after her body arrived at the family home in Taman Bayu here at about 3.15pm, seven of Hui Min's fellow trainees who shared the same hostel with her arrived to pay their respects.

NS Training Council member Joseph Wang, who visited the family, said an internal investigation would be conducted to find out what led to Hui Min's illness.

Hui Min’s body will be cremated at the Fairy Park cemetery at noon today. The hearse will leave the house at 11am.