A joint protest by a group of national service (NS) cadets yesterday forced authorities at a training campus in Terengganu to retract a prohibition on students taking more than one day's leave.

Some 100 students, mainly Chinese Malaysians, demanded to be allowed to return home for a weekend in order to perform rites for Ching Ming - a annual Chinese custom to pay respects to ancestors.

Although the government had indicated approval yesterday for NS trainees to leave the camp for a 24-hour period to perform their customary obligations, this had been tied to the condition that the trainees are picked up from the camps by their parents.

This meant that a large number of them would not be able to return as their hometowns are too far away for parents to pick them up and send them back to the camps within the stipulated leave period.

However, in an unexpected development yesterday, a group of disgruntled trainees organised a protest at the Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) campus in Dungun to demand that transportation be arranged and for waiver of the requirement for parental presence.

"A group of them refused to attend classes. They gathered in a tent next to the canteen and banged on the tables. They made a lot of noise," one trainee said.

"Some spoke up and asked the camp volunteers to make arrangements for them to return home. They said it was an important occasion."

Wesak leave

With the revised arrangement, camp authorities are said to have arranged for buses to take the trainees to their home states on Friday evening and to return to the campus by Sunday evening.

When contacted, the parent of an affected trainee said the earlier directive from authorities was for parents to collect their children from the campus or, alternatively, arrange their own transportation from Dungun.

"Yesterday, the camp authorities said they could hire a bus to take the trainees to Kuala Lumpur but that we would have to pay for the trip," said the parent who declined to be named.

The parent said camp authorities have also approved another leave period for the cadets to return home to observe Wesak Day which falls on May 3.

An official at the UiTM campus confirmed the development but declined to provide further details beyond saying that approval for the weekend leave was given by the higher education authorities.