Malaysia sticks to call-up scheme

By Jonathan Kent
BBC, Kuala Lumpur

More than 80,000 teenagers are due to take part this year

Malaysia's deputy prime minister has rejected calls to suspend the country's new national service programme.

The scheme, which was launched in February, is intended to build harmony between Malaysia's races and instil discipline into its young people.

However, there have been reports of rioting, race attacks, sexual assaults, extortion and drug abuse.

There was chaos from day one as many of the buses ferrying trainees to national service jungle camps either failed to arrive or dropped off teenagers in the wrong places.

Last month students at a camp in East Malaysia rioted after adult supervisors, who police say may have been drunk, beat up four trainees.

Though the scheme was supposed to build bridges between Malaysia's Chinese, Indian, Malay and indigenous peoples, there have also been a number of reports of fights between race-based gangs.

Discipline

The Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, says that rather than suspend the programme, military drills may be brought in.

He is also promising to reduce boredom which he has identified as a factor in the unrest.

Army units have been deployed at some camps to enhance discipline.

More than 80,000 teenagers all born in 1986 are due to take part in national service training this year.

The scheme was introduced amid fears that the country's different ethnic groups were drifting apart.

Some have hailed it as a success, but critics of the programme said it ignored the underlying causes of racial division, not least the government's three decades' old policy of giving jobs, contracts and handouts to the ethnic Malay majority.