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Monday, August 07, 2006

National Service Should be an Equal Opportunity for Youths

To encourage youths to enrol for NS, some perks have been offered like free uniforms and an alumni club.

Now the intake has been increased to at least 100,000 out of 443,895 youths or about 22%.

I think a more effective NS program would be to ensure that ALL youths are given an equal opportunity to serve.

This can be achieved if the training is shortened to 30 days instead of the present 90 days. Discipline and self-development can be instilled in a course fashioned on the Outward Bound School program that has trained thousands of Malaysians already over more than 50 years.

If we can shorten NS to 30 days, it means we can increase the intake to 300,000 just incurring some extra costs in transport.

It is quite unfair to penalise those who were not selected for NS in the university intake exercise. The alternative is to accept all those who want to do NS and for this a reserved number equivalent to university places should be set aside.

It is simply not good enough to penalise our youth based on some “transparent” computer selection. We are playing with people’s futures on the luck of the draw.




2 comments:

straits mongrel said...

I enjoy your blog though I've never left comments. Keep it up, and the polls too!

NS is a huge national resource which remains untapped. Rather than shortening, I actually propose lengthening it, but only after a major overhaul. A military-style NS is shallow given the national objectives. The key is in charging up youths with a sense of purpose, and decentralizing control (and budget).

Like you, i too wrote about it. Pls see http://bumiku.blogspot.com/2006/03/khidmat-negara-ver-20.html

It's somewhat lengthy but i felt somewhat strongly about it :)

H J Angus said...

hi sm

thanks for visiting.
I read your article and think it is worth considering.

I think it will be more useful for the youths if they engage in such training than the present regimented scheme.