The national service (NS) programme was a fiasco waiting to happen. The idea was excellent. It was a long time coming. We are not told why we need it in a hurry, but we have a surfeit of rosy official statements of what it hopes to achieve. One cannot flout it.

But beneath it is a veritable can of worms which reveals the corruption, the inefficiency, the dangers of entrusting teenagers to a programme subject to market and primordial forces deliberately ignored and forgotten in this rush to force it down the throats of Malaysians.

The blind and the deaf have taken it upon themselves to teach the sighted, with the real danger that the sighted will be half-blind and half-deaf at the end of it. The government has threatened hellfire and brimstone to those who have refused to take part in it.

But when the inequities became public knowledge, the cabinet stepped in to insist it would be carried out without fail. The 10,000 who did not turn up were first threatened with jail and, when that raised a storm, given a second chance. But the closer you look into it, the more frightening the impact.

Half-baked plan

There is nothing wrong with NS if it is carried out as it should be. For years, the Barisan Nasional (BN) government would not hear of it for that would mean teaching non-Malays the rudiments of using weapons.

The racial reasoning is uppermost in official policy. Its national integration plan is to unite the races to a mathematical plan: six Malays, three Chinese, one Indian.

No one has told us why the NS is needed. But it is to bring order and discipline to wayward Malay boys and girls who drift into the towns from the villages, and away from societies, unable to cope and without help or hope.

In every town, the shanty towns where they congregate are centres of anti-social behaviour. The usual litany of drugs, anti-social behaviour, teenage pregnancies and other social ills predominate, and tests the government's promise to wean them out of it.

But apart from pious statements of intention, nothing is done. They have now become a political problem.

So, the NS scheme was concocted, its scope widened to include all teenagers, and enveloped in high ideals and intent. But there was no discussion about it, no serious thought given, nor how the money would be spent.

Nevertheless, a half-baked plan was put into operation. Lucrative portions were farmed out to politically connected Umno worthies. The high ideals and intent masked a scramble for a piece of the action in which the girls and boys were cannon fodder.

If the government was serious about it, it should have handed this scheme to the armed forces. They have a history of training recruits into shape and discipline. They know what they do. And I dare say, even with the three months available, those who went through the course would have benefitted much from it.

But to do that, the armed forces should have been brought into the discussion. They were not. There was no consistent plan.

It is doubtful if the NS scheme itself will be a permanent. When the money runs out, or the organisers see something new that can be farmed out for cash, the scheme will be good as dead.

Instill discipline

All we know is that RM500 million has been allotted and 40 camps have been set up, with 600 boys and girls in each, looked after by trainers, allegedly selected with care but not so, as we now know. Since there are three batches this year, about 87,000 will go through this mill.

They move from one camp to another for the four modules they have to follow, and as they move out, a new batch will fill their place. The physical training module, and the camps where they take place, at the fringes of the jungle, are privatised. Security there is non-existent. Each camp should have at least 20 guards, but there are only two.

Although RM25 is allotted per day per person for food, only RM9 is spent. The authorities ignore allegations of rape and other crimes, upset not that they took place but that these give the programme a bad name!

Yet the New Straits Times made the alleged rape of a trainee its lead story on the front page. As usual in these matters, there was an agenda. It was not out of horror or concern but that this programme comes under the aegis of Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, who, in the belief of the Umno politics of the day, should be eased out.

The trainers were selected, often at random, without background checks or competence, and made to work 16 to 20 hours a day. Many of them are not paid at all, or in dribs and drabs. The morale is understandably low, amongst the trainees and the trainers. Fights break out, rapes take place, peeping toms are a menace, discipline is not there, nor a desire of authority to make it work.

But the bigger problem is that it cannot be wished away. That the cabinet insists the NS programme would not stop is no substitute for the mess on the ground. Two opposition political parties, Keadilan and DAP, have called for it to be suspended. Given the mess the government is in, it should modify the programme drastically.

Start with the boys and bring the girls in if it has to, but only when the system is up and running. Why were the camps and training privatised to invididuals and companies with no experience? Why wasn't the armed forces brought in? Why were not all these problems and difficulties discussed and sorted out as they arose?

Without discipline, the camps will descend into a rabble. Especially when its administration is flawed with over-worked and unpaid trainers and with an administration that only know that the camps must be filled for them to make money.

What we should worry about is that, given the indifferent training the boys and girls get, is that some, if not more, could turn out even worse social menaces than when they entered.

For the others, if they are chosen to a mathematical formulae as they now are, the NS would be an even more bitter pill in that it convinces them that Malaysia is a racial society. If this is what national integration is, then it surely sends out the wrong signals.

Some of the horror stories out of these camps, told to parents by their children, appear so frightening, but the information cannot get a hearing. Why?

Is there a plan to ask the trainees to write an assessment of their time in camp? If there is not, there should be. If it is an important programme, why this excessive secrecy about it? Nothing short of a full parliamentary debate would do.