National Service under the purview of Jabatan Latihan Khidmat Negara since 2003 has amended their safety policies to exclude candidates with medical conditions. Those candidates would are sick or unfit would be exempted from attending the National Service program.
Between 2003 until this year, there were a few deaths in several National Service camps and at hospital after the trainee was taken seriously ill. More than half of those death are due to negligence of the officers at the National Service camps whereby they only send the overly sick trainee to hospital. By that time, it was too late.
Between 2003 until this year, there were also a few cases whereby the parent of the deceased trainee sued the government for the incompetency of the NS camp officers.
So five years have lapsed and only now the government revamp their policies for the NS program which include exemption of sick candidates from attending the program as well as specific instructions to the NS camp commandants to rush the trainee to hospital for any sign of sickness.
It's a typical slow response on government side whereby the government only take concrete action after damages has been done and in this case, after a few deaths at NS camps.
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Source: thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/6/11/nation/21511450&sec=nation
Candidates with medical conditions will not be accepted for National Service
By PAUL CHOO and ONG EU LIN
RAWANG: National Service (NS) candidates with medical conditions that would exempt them from physical training will not be selected for the programme beginning next year.
NS Training Department director-general Datuk Abdul Hadi Awang Kechil said these candidates were currently categorised as conditionally accepted after they sent in their medical declaration forms and were exempted from vigorous physical activities during training.
“This is to ensure that there are no untoward incidences,” he told a press conference after launching a first-aid course at the NS camp in Temasya Rimba Templer yesterday.
Abdul Hadi said these trainees often became bored whenever their fellow trainees went for physical activities.
“There is no point in asking a trainee to just stay idle while his peers take part in various exercises,” he said.
Another measure to reduce the number of illnesses and deaths from health problems included allowing trainees to label as “unsure”, in the list of 33 illnesses in their medical declaration form.
“NS officials and medical staff at camps will monitor trainees who tick ‘unsure’ more closely. In addition to this, trainees who have marked ‘yes’ to any illnesses will immediately be scrutinised by medical staff at camps upon reporting for duty,” Abdul Hadi said.
Previously, the form carried only a yes and no column for trainees to tick if they suffered from any of the listed illnesses.
The three-day first-aid course, held in collaboration with the Malaysian Red Crescent Society, is aimed at equipping NS camp management and staff with basic first-aid knowledge.
It was the second installment of the programme, the first having trained some 200 NS personnel in level one first-aid emergency basics.
Abdul Hadi said the department also hoped to impart first-aid skills to some 500,000 trainees through the programme.
1 comments:
the health issue was taken into consideration in the beginning of the ns. just that it was not enforced, similar to many other laws in malaysia.
the issue here is not during admission time but in the middle of the ns where the youth fell sick but was not attended to accordingly
any decisions being made now is just a big cover up
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